


Searching For A Sweet Surrender

by Waking_dreams



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, Frottage, Hunger Games, Hunger Games AU, It's a sort of happy ending, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waking_dreams/pseuds/Waking_dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, District Twelve Tributes.</p><p>The Sixty-Fifth Hunger Games has begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Storm Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shoulderbladesarewings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoulderbladesarewings/gifts).



> For shoulderbladesarewings, I hope you like it.
> 
> I have honestly never written or read a Zouis fic before, and now I've churned out 36k in only a few weeks. I'm converted.
> 
> Also: no characters from the Hunger Games appear here, but I do borrow a lot of ideas from those books. This isn't a retelling of the Hunger Games novel, but it will have a few parallels.
> 
> Note on all the warnings: I tried to err on the side of caution when tagging this.  
> Note on the panic attacks and PTSD warning: it's not in your face, but if either of those things are triggering to you, this story may trigger you.  
> Note on the violence warning: it's not gratuitous, but it's the Hunger Games.  
> Note on the suicide warning: again, it's the Hunger Games. It's more self-sacrifice rather than depressive episodes or self-harm.
> 
> Title comes from the song "I'm A Mess" by Ed Sheeran.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanings that apply: suicide mentions, angst.

“Zayn Malik.”

Louis feels all his breath rush out of him and pure, sweet relief floods in. It wasn’t him. He was safe—the odds were in his favor, this time. As he watches a sharply beautiful dark-haired boy unsteadily climb the stairs to the stage, he feels a little guilty: it’s an awful thing to be glad at the death of another, even if it means he is safe instead. The boy has reached the announcer—her name has purposefully escaped Louis for years—and even from here, Louis can tell that he is holding back tears. The buoyant feeling in his chest abates a little, leaving room for more guilt. That boy is as good as dead, and he should not be happy about anyone’s death. This year meant more: he was eighteen, and he could never be Reaped now. He felt as though the world was heaving a huge weight off his shoulders. _He was safe_ and that boy was not but _he was safe_.

“And for our female tribute,” the blue-haired announcer continued, dipping her hand into the glass ball of girl’s names. “Charlotte Tomlinson.”

Louis will remember this moment until the day he dies: the sudden, lurching feeling in his gut, the way he cannot breath, starts gasping for breath. His baby sister. She’s twelve and she was supposed to be safe. She’s twelve and she’s gone, she’s dead, too. He can see her start to make her way to the stage, and he’s shaking, hyperventilating. He feels like he is going to be sick, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is:

“I volunteer!”

His little sister pauses in her ascent up the stairs, and she whips around to look at him, singling him out in the crowd instantly. Her eyes are wide and brimming with tears and it’s this that has him repeating himself even louder and more desperately.

“I volunteer as tribute!”

Murmurs break out around him, in the crowd. The time has passed for him to volunteer for male tribute—typically a volunteer must step forward before the original selection has made it onto the stage, let alone before the announcer selects the next tribute. A boy volunteering for the female tribute—it’s not allowed, it’s never been done. He shoulders his way to the front of the crowd, approaching the stage even as he stares up at the announcer challengingly. He cannot look his sister in the eye, doesn’t know what he will find.

“I—this is not allowed,” the announcer stammers, looking flustered. She’s clearly not prepared to deal with this type of rule breaking. The head Peacekeeper steps forward then, bending his head to whisper into her ear. She shakes her head, confused, and the crowd’s muttering grows louder. He can’t tell what they’re saying. A buzzing has filled his ears and he cannot focus on anything but the expression on the announcer’s face as it goes from confusion to thoughtfulness to decisiveness. The Peacekeeper continues to whisper for several long moments, as the crowd waits in tense silence.

“The Capitol has decided to accept this volunteer.”

The crowd erupts once more into noise: shouting and confusion. Louis numbly approaches the stage, brushing past his sister without saying a word.

“What’s your name, love?” the announcer asks, looking at him with a wide, fake smile.

“Louis Tomlinson.” He doesn’t remember saying it aloud, but he must have. He takes his place beside the announcer, opposite the other boy. He doesn’t look at him, either, just stares at the ground, at his worn sneakers. He’s dead. The other boy is dead and he’s dead, too. At least Lottie isn’t dead. Yet. She’s only twelve and she has six more years of this, and he won’t be around to protect her because he’ll be dead. He feels nauseous.

“Volunteering for your sister?” the announcer asks gaily. “What a brave boy, can’t let her have all the honor, eh?” She laughs, high and fake and awful, into the microphone.

His stomach rolls at the thought of doing this for _honor_ , for fame or glory or whatever the fuck else the capitol will think are his reasons. He’s not a hero or a martyr: he’s Louis Tomlinson and he loves his sister more than he loves life.

“There’s always next year, Charlotte! Maybe your brother can even mentor you to victory,” the announcer continues, chuckling to herself.

That does it. Louis gags, flinging a hand to his mouth, but it’s not enough. He doubles over, puking all over the stage and the pristine white of the announcer’s boots.

He later hears they edited that out of the broadcast.

***

“Are you okay?” the dark-haired boy—Zayn—asks him as they wait for their families.

Louis blinks, startled that the boy is actually talking to him. His voice is smooth, even. Beautiful. No sign of the tears that had plagued him on the stage earlier. Then the question sinks in and Louis sees red. “Yeah,” he snarls at the boy. “All of this is fucking _great_.” It’s not Zayn’s fault, none of it is, but Louis wants to hurt someone, anyone, as if it will make him feel better. He hates him because Zayn is utterly gorgeous and because they’re both going to die.

The time they do get with their families is blissfully short. Louis doesn’t want them to remember him like this: shaking, crying, smelling like puke. He doesn’t want to remember _them_ like this: tearful, afraid, and, in Lottie’s case, guilt-ridden. He hugs her, hard, trying to memorize the smell of her hair (floral soap) and where her head fits against his body (tucked under his chin, the wisps of her hair brushing his nose). His mother cries against his neck, and he doesn’t want that, even as he cries right back, into her hair. He hates all of it, from the tears to the way that he can hear Zayn’s own tearful goodbyes if he tries hard enough. Then the Peacekeepers are pulling him off of his mother, physically dragging him away, and he’s kicking and screaming for them to stop, but he isn’t strong enough.

The last thing he hears is Lottie yelling for him not to go.

***

“So where’s Liam, then?” Louis snaps at Zayn when they’re on the train, headed to the Capitol. He pretends that his voice doesn’t crack and waver, remnants from crying, and he plays off wiping his nose as scratching an itch.

“He should be here.” The other boy offers nothing else. He doesn’t even look up. Louis wants to shake him, hit him, wrench some response he doesn’t understand out of him.

“We’re going to die,” Louis snarls at him, trying to find a target for his anger. “We’re going to die.”

“I know.” His reply is quiet, and when he looks away, Louis thinks he might be crying again. The profile view of his face is stunning: sharp angles of his jaw, curved lines of his throat, thick eyelashes clumped together with tears. Louis suddenly feels like screaming.

Then the door to the compartment is sliding open and Liam Payne, the only living District Twelve victor, is walking in. He looks older than Louis imagined—even though he’s only about twenty-four. His hair is cut short, his eyes dark, worry lines etched permanently into his forehead. He won his Games by poisoning the Career tributes’ water supply. It was a quick and bloodless year. The Capitol retaliated the next year by setting lose a modified bear that mauled six tributes before one managed to kill it.

“Hello,” Liam begins, quietly, and slides the door shut behind him. “Zayn and Louis.” He says the names slowly, almost as if in mourning, and Louis hates him already.

“Hello, _Liam_ ,” Louis bites back. “How’s your morning going, then? Which of us is your favorite, then? Me and Zayn. Who’s going to die first?” He drags his finger between Zayn and himself, feeling distantly the twisted snarl contorting his face.

Zayn makes a sound, but when Louis glances at him, he’s still looking away.

“I don’t know,” Liam replies sadly, and it’s a punch to the gut, this acknowledgement that Louis is going to die. “But I’m going to make sure you both live as long as possible. Starting with right now. Sit down, Louis.”

Louis doesn’t sit so much as he collapses, his knees buckling and depositing him in the seat next to Zayn.

“Do either of you have any skills?” Liam asks as he sits himself, pressing two fingers into each of his temples. “Anything that will help you in the arena. Anything at all?” He sounds like he’s given up, already, and Louis wants to hit him.

“I can knit you a mean scarf,” Louis snaps, and his fingers twitch, clench into a fist.

“I’m alright with a hatchet,” Zayn mumbles at the same time.

They both pause, stare at each other. Louis wonders if Zayn will be the one to kill him. If Zayn will cut off his head with a bloody hatchet. If Lottie will see it during school.

“What do you mean, a hatchet?” Liam presses. Theres a glimmer of hope in his face.

“I mean, my father owns a bakery, and every morning I cut the wood for the ovens.”

“Great. Zayn can get all the firewood for our campfires then,” Louis says sarcastically. His head is spinning. He really hopes he doesn’t throw up again.

“That’s something we can work with,” Liam continues, as if Louis had not spoken, and he sounds relieved. Maybe District Twelve tributes usually are as talentless as they look. Even this mild claim to some sort of potentially deadly skill is impressive. “Louis, do you know any skills? It doesn’t have to be with a weapon. Any sort of survival skills would do.” Louis hates the gentle tone, as if Liam were speaking to a small child.

“Besides my scarves?” Louis is snarling again. “I’ve got nothing, Liam, good luck keeping me alive.” He shouldn’t be here. Why did they let him volunteer, anyways? Two boy tributes has never been done. He laughs, and it’s thick and bitter in his mouth.

***

“Liam is just trying to help you,” Zayn snaps at him once Liam has left the compartment. “He’s on our side.”

“Ah, look, Zaynie bites back,” Louis sneers. His stomach is still churning and he hasn’t eaten all day, despite the buffet of food on this damn train. Having Zayn’s full attention, his sharp brown eyes focused on Louis, only unsettles him further. “Go cut some firewood.”

The next thing he knows is the pain of Zayn’s fist connecting with his jaw. His head snaps back, and the sharp taste of blood fills his mouth. He spits a mouthful of it, crimson and sticky, into his palm. “Careful, you can get disqualified for attacking a tribute outside of the arena,” he can distantly hear himself saying. He sounds like he’s gargling rocks. He spits out another mouthful of blood, this time straight onto the carpet of the train. He must have bitten his tongue.

Zayn snorts. “Listen, asshole, you’re not the only one with a family. We’ll go farther working together, so get your head out of your ass.” He’s rubbing his reddened knuckles. Louis hopes punching him hurt.

“Great idea. When it’s just us standing in that arena, let’s flip a fucking coin for it, yeah? Fair and square.” Louis rubs his jaw, moving it around. It’ll definitely bruise. Good thing the Capitol makeup artists are so good. Lucky him, really.

“I doubt it’ll come to that,” Zayn replies drily. “But you can run it by Liam, see if he can get a sponsor to send a coin.”

Louis kind of smiles. A little. It’s painful and red and messy and he’s not anywhere close to happy, but it’s a smile. It’s the first time he hasn’t felt like punching someone or ripping out his own hair all day. “My mum’s a nurse,” he says without even meaning to. “I help her, sometimes. I know a fair bit about medicine.”

“Firewood and band aids,” Zayn says, quietly, leaning over to open the freezer beside the. His face is blank. Louis is somewhat pissed that he can never tell what Zayn is thinking.

“Firewood and band aids,” he repeats back, and accepts the bag of ice that Zayn hands to him, pressing it to his jaw. It feels like an understanding, a peace offering.

***

He will never, ever admit this aloud, but having Zayn with him when they meet their stylists makes it a little bit easier.

“Hello,” offers the taller of the pair. He’s rather conservatively dressed for the Capitol, wearing tight leather pants with gold seams, glittery gold boots, and a patterned shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, revealing even skin that’s unadorned with the brightly colored tattoos that are all the rage in the Captol. His hair appears to be its original color, and it hangs loosely around his face in curls. “I’m Harry. I’m your stylist, Louis.”

“Hello, lads,” the other greets. This one has bleached blond hair, dramatic eyeliner, and eyes that are so blue that they must be contacts. His clothing, as well, is conservative in comparison: a skin tight red shirt that has the appearance of being made of some sort of scales and pants with deliberate frays along his thighs. “I’m Niall. That makes me yours, Zayn.” He ends it with a wink.

“For the opening ceremony, we were going for bright and flashy,” Harry gushes. Louis can feel Zayn stiffen beside him.

“Fantastic,” Louis mutters under his breath.

“Canaries!” Niall exclaims, brandishing a bright yellow, feathery bolt of cloth.

“Like a canary in a coal mine,” Harry explains, smiling as though he’s just waiting for the punch line to sink in. District Twelve. Coal. Canaries.

It’s sinking in, all right. “Canaries die in coal mines,” Louis says slowly, angrily. “That’s the whole fucking point of having a canary in a coal mine. So that it’ll keel over and die as soon as there’s poisonous gas in the air.” Zayn shifts beside him, and their shoulders brush. Louis feels a little warmer, suddenly, and shoots him a sideways glance. The other boy doesn’t say a thing.

Harry pauses, the smile on his face rapidly fading. “That’s not what we meant by it.” He looks at Niall, as if for confirmation. “Not at all.”

“It’s too late to change it,” Niall confesses, almost apologetically. “But we can consult you before we design your interview looks?”

Louis snorts. If that’s supposed to make him feel better, it doesn’t. “No, it’s a perfect metaphor,” he says, bright and deadly. “It’s not like we’re going to live much longer, anyways.”

Harry looks distraught. Niall looks uncomfortable. Louis doesn’t give a single shit about either of these things.

“Shut up, Louis,” Zayn snaps. “Just get us ready, yeah?” He directs the last part towards their stylists.

“Right,” Niall says. He claps his hands, obviously trying to diffuse the tension in the room. “Zayn, you can come with me to makeup. Louis, Harry will take you to hair first.”

Louis hates everything about this: the insensitive, inappropriate costumes, the gaudy makeup he knows will be smeared on his face, the quiff they will probably force his hair into, the opening ceremonies he will have to sit through and pretend not to hate. Mostly he hates that he will never see his family again, and that he will likely die a public and violent death, stabbed or poisoned or strangled. He hates the whole world and maybe himself, but he follows Harry to go meet his hair stylists. He should save his fight for the arena, but he’s not going to. If Louis is going down, he is going down screaming and dragging everyone else down with him.

***

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Zayn hisses at him as they get off the District Twelve chariot just outside the Training Center.

Louis smiles at him. It comes out more of a snarl than a smile. “Expressing myself.” He feels out of control, like all the jagged little broken pieces of him will start to cut him open from the inside.

“Next time you decide to express yourself, don’t drag me down with you. It’s not just your own fucking life you’re playing with.” Zayn’s tone is icy, and his face is hard, not a single crack in it. His eyes are flat.

“We’re all going to die anyways,” Louis snarls back. So what if he ripped his fucking canary wings off his costume and threw them on the ground? Made for a memorable entrance to the opening ceremony, didn’t it? At least they’ll make the fucking recap of this year’s Games before their deaths flash across the screens. At least the sponsors will know who they are.

“Louis.”

Great. Liam’s here.

“Do you have any idea how hard it will be to cover for you after that?” Liam’s voice is tight, and his eyes are bugging out a bit.

Louis smiles nastily at him. “Then don’t.”

Liam heaves a sigh, anger giving way to seeming exhaustion. “Why’d you have to flip off the cameras? Destroying your damn costume was bad enough. Everyone’s already talking about the two boys from Twelve, but now you’ve given them a real fucking show.”

He sounds so weary, and Louis hates that. What gives him the right to be weary? He won his fucking Games, got to come home to his family. Sure it wasn’t a piece of cake, but at least he’s alive. Louis isn’t going to get that privilege. “I was expressing myself,” he repeats, and he can tell from the stony expression on Liam’s face that he sounds as petulant to others as he does to himself.

“Just go to your rooms,” Liam says, shaking his head. “While I try to figure out an excuse for you.”

Louis opens his mouth to snap back that he doesn’t need a fucking excuse, just let the Capitol destroy him for all anyone cares. Zayn clamps a hand down around his arm first, though, and squeezes him tight enough to hurt. When he looks over at the other boy, Zayn’s face is tight and pinched and he shakes his head once, quickly.

“Come on.” Zayn sounds a little calmer than he looks. When Louis shuts his mouth, practically biting his tongue, his face softens: mouth relaxed, eyes wide and warm brown, lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. He’s beautiful, and Louis hates it, hates how he can feel his own body relax and how he follows where Zayn leads.

When they climb into the elevator, Zayn leans over so his lips are almost brushing Louis’ ear and whispers, “Meet me on the rooftop at midnight.”

Louis doesn’t look at him, though he cannot help the shiver that goes through his body from the wisps of Zayn’s breath on his skin. He doesn’t say a thing, just presses the button for their floor and watches the doors close.

***

The rooftop is much colder than he expected.

He hasn’t brought a jacket, and the wind bites easily through the fabric of his shirt. The view of the city is captivating: bright lights and distant sounds that make him feel even more removed from life itself. He wonders where the Games will be this year, what terrain he will die in. If he’ll freeze to death in the snow or die of thirst in the sand.

“You’re late,” Zayn accuses suddenly. Louis jumps—where had he come from?

“Fucking maze to get up here,” he replies defensively. Honestly, though. A maze of stairs and _Do Not Enter_ signs. “What do you want, though, anyways?”

Zayn doesn’t answer right away. He moves to stand a little further away, leaning against the railing that spans the perimeter of the roof. He reaches into his pocket, producing a cigarette and a lighter. Louis stares, wondering how the hell he managed to get that, let alone if he knows how to use it—he’s only seventeen. He lights it, and then takes a slow drag, his eyes following the path of the smoke he breathes out. Louis cannot stop watching him. His hair and skin look almost silver in the odd mixture of lights from the city below and the moon above.

“There aren’t any cameras on the roof. They can’t watch us here,” Zayn says finally, and his eyes move from the smoke to Louis’ face.

Louis squints at him. The Capitol has cameras everywhere. “How do you know?”

“Liam,” Zayn says simply.

Louis isn’t expecting the hot flare of jealousy. He knew Liam would prefer Zayn, he did, but he isn’t prepared for the evidence that Zayn and Liam have talked without him. At dinner that night, they _had_ got along very well, often leaving Louis out of the conversation about the other tributes, but he didn’t realize they had been meeting privately. Liam probably smuggled him the cigarette. “It must be nice,” Louis drawls. “Having Liam giving you all this information, you know.” His voice is only slightly strangled. Jealous.

“You’re the one who stormed out of dinner early,” Zayn shoots back. “Being angry isn’t going to help you survive the Games.” He takes another drag, and Louis hates how collected he looks, this boy pretending to be a man, when Louis feels like he’s being held together at his seams.

“Got any better ideas, pretty boy?” He doesn’t know where _that_ came from, but it certainly wasn’t from the conscious part of his brain.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Zayn says very, very seriously. He’s scary calm, and Louis wonders briefly if he brought Louis up here so he could punch him without the cameras catching it. Zayn takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “One of us could win, you know.”

Louis flinches. “Yeah. One,” he bites back. “You gonna be the bigger man and off yourself so I can win?”

Zayn snorts. Louis doesn’t know if this counts as him finding Louis funny, since that wasn’t really meant to be funny. He really shouldn’t care about what Zayn thinks of him, anyways. “Work with me, Lou. Fight the Capitol all you want. Just quit fighting me, and Liam, because we all need each other.”

 _Lou._ Quit fighting. Louis has never quit fighting a day in his life. “I’m afraid,” he confesses. It’s quiet, a whisper underneath the distant roar of city nightlife, but Zayn hears him.

“I am, too.” Zayn’s voice is nearly inaudible. He glances over at Louis, and then reaches over, offering him the cigarette.

Louis takes it, because it’s clear that it’s a peace offering. He’s never really smoked before. His family has enough money to afford luxuries like cigarettes, but his mum had always called it a nasty habit. He stares at it, between his fingers. He just has to breathe it in, right? He lifts it to his mouth, and inhales slowly. Immediately, he’s coughing, eyes bulging at the bitter taste. Zayn claps him on the back, and he hands the cigarette back to cover his mouth with both hands as he coughs, his body protesting against the smoke.

“You didn’t have to take it,” Zayn says, sounding almost amused. “It’s a filthy habit, anyways.” He takes a drag, as if to counter his words.

Louis shrugs, embarrassed. “We’re going to die anyways.” It’s just as true as the other thousand times Louis has said it, but it hurts more than usual.

“Promise me,” Zayn says softly. “Promise me that you’ll let us help you. And that when we’re in the arena, you’ll help me back.”

Louis has not thought about what his plan is for surviving once he’s in the arena. He hasn’t allowed himself to think that far into the future. Even so, he’s never, ever considered refusing to help Zayn once they were in the arena. He’s always assumed they would stick together. The two boys from Twelve. He feels ashamed, somehow, that Zayn thought he might. “I promise.”

Zayn offers him the cigarette again. He takes it, because he’s going to die, and he wants to watch the way the smoke ghosts across the night sky. He hacks out a cough, and Zayn laughs and claps him on the back, and he wonders what it would have been like if they’d met in District Twelve instead of on the stage on Reaping Day.

***

“I don’t want to team up with the other tributes,” Louis says bluntly to Zayn as they survey the training room. They’re early, so there are only a few scattered tributes around the room: a blonde haired girl from Six around their age over at the archery station, a dark-skinned, bald boy who cannot be more than thirteen at the spear station, and two tributes who look like mirror images of each other over at the knife throwing station. Louis knows those two, at least. Tributes from District Four, and twins. Career Tributes. The boy has messy black hair and sharp, pointy-looking black eyes. The girl is just as tall as her brother, and the only noticeable difference between them is that she has slightly shorter, scruffier hair and is wearing bright red lipstick.

When he looks over at Zayn, he can tell he’s staring at the twins, too. Boy Twin and Girl Twin. Plain Twin and Lipstick Twin. Louis doesn’t know their names, hasn’t bothered to learn any of the names of the tributes that may kill him. “It would be better to have an alliance,” Zayn points out, but it’s clear that those are Liam’s words, not his.

“Yeah, until your ally is stabbing you while you sleep.” There’s a station in the back of the training room that looks to just have plants. Maybe medicine related? Louis wants to start there. He knows it’s probably smarter to go to the knife station or the station that seems to be for hand-to-hand fighting. After all, in any sort of actual fight, Louis will be completely fucked. 56% of deaths in the Games are at the hands of another tribute, after all.

“I could stab you in you sleep,” Zayn says conversationally.

Louis snorts, glares at him. “In your dreams, Firewood.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “No allies, then?” He doesn’t sound bothered by the prospect of just teaming up with Louis.

“No allies,” Louis confirms, and then points to the plant station. “Let’s start there, yeah?”

It turns out that the plant station is for identifying common toxic plants, not plants with medicinal properties. They both linger on that station for most of the morning, trying to avoid the other tributes, who mostly populate the weapons stations. They split up after it becomes clear that they have memorized the leaves of the common toxic plants, and Zayn goes to find the closest weapon to a hatchet and see the weapons instructor. Louis mills about for a bit before settling on the medicine station. He already knows almost everything they cover, from stopping bleeding to making simple braces for broken bones, but he does learn a better method for sewing open wounds closed. Specifically, he learns that the Capitol has medicines that can glue such wounds closed without the need for the cheaper, less effective needle and thread—or the even worse option, cauterization. He then bites the bullet and goes to the hand combat station. He’s awful, honestly. He knew he was going to be awful, but he wasn’t prepared for the snickers he can hear behind him as the instructor gently corrects his form, tells him to keep his elbows in and to punch without his thumb inside his fist. He’s honestly grateful when lunch begins, and immediately begins scanning the room for Zayn.

He sees him making his way to the tables, chatting to the blonde tribute from Six. Louis stares at them, feeling a weird feeling in his stomach. It’s not jealousy, but it’s not good either. They agreed: no allies.

“This is Perrie,” Zayn says when he catches up with them. They all sit together at one of the tables.

“You’re the one who stripped and flipped off the cameras,” Perrie comments as she begins to eat. “I remember you.”

Louis cuts into his meat with a lot more force than necessary. “Sorry, I don’t remember you at all,” he replies, too sweetly.

“Louis,” Zayn cuts in, disapproving.

“Zayn,” he retorts in the same tone. He’s just suddenly, abruptly, not in the mood for this. “God, I’m going to eat over there.”

He picks up his lunch and pointedly moves to one of the other tables. The tributes from Three are giving him weird looks—he’s sitting at their table, after all. He tries to ignore him, stares at his plate. He doesn’t even know what type of meat he’s eating, except that it’s nothing he’s had before and that it’s so rich he feels slightly sick. He pokes at it with his fork, frowning, and then a familiar body sits across from him, setting a plate on the table beside his.

“You’re such a bitch sometimes,” Zayn snaps at him, and picks up his fork to take a bite.

Louis glares at him, then glances at the old table, where Perrie is now sitting with the other tribute from Six. “What, no girlfriend?”

“God, shut up.” Zayn sounds really annoyed. Good. No fucking allies. “I was just being nice to her. You should try that sometime.”

Louis stabs the piece of meat on his plate. “You agreed to no allies,” he points out tightly.

Zayn chokes out a laugh, managing to not sound amused in the slightest. “She asked if she could sit and eat with me, _Jesus_. I didn’t—I’m fine with it being us.”

“Firewood and band aids,” Louis says. It comes out as a question. God, he hates feeling like this. Like he can’t trust anyone, even Zayn.

“You’re a piece of work.” Zayn sighs roughly. “You should talk to the other tributes. It won’t kill you.”

Louis’ hands tighten into fists. “It will fucking kill me, because the other tributes are exactly the people who _are_ going to kill me.” Maybe even Zayn. He doesn’t think the other boy would kill him in his sleep, but if it came down to the two of them… Well, he’d ask Liam for that coin.

Zayn doesn’t reply. When he looks up, the other boy is frowning. He can’t even get along with the tribute from his own District. How is he supposed to make friends with the tributes from other Districts, then?

“Firewood and fucking band aids it is, then.” Zayn says it abruptly, shortly, and then goes back to eating his lunch like what he said hasn’t spread a grudging smile across Louis’ mouth.

After lunch, they split up again. Zayn goes off to look at some sort of rope tying station, which Louis admits is important but looks just honestly dull, and Louis finds himself at the knife station, alongside Plain Twin and Lipstick Twin from Four. He tries to ignore the way they both have clear experience with throwing knives, as they both manage to fling them with deadly accuracy at the target dummies. What he gets out of being at that station for over an hour is a vague understanding that he should try to throw the knife as levelly as possible so it won’t spin. It hasn’t translated into actual skill whatsoever, but he’s so done with knives at that point that he moves on to a station about stripping and gutting animals. He honestly hopes he doesn’t have to ever use that knowledge, but he thinks the odds of the Gamemakers dropping them in the middle of some sort of garden or forest overflowing with fruits is highly unlikely.

Eventually, he catches up with Zayn, who has made his way to the archery station. They’re both pretty bad, but Zayn—much to Louis’ frustration—does actually manage to hit the slowly moving target they’re both aiming for. Louis does not deal well with losing, particularly when losing means he will die. Or at least, when losing means that he has failed to learn a skill that may save him from death. When they visit the hand fighting station, Louis is certain he will do no better than before, and he is mostly correct. The instructor welcomes him back, and then insists it’s best if they both learn through supervised fights with each other. Zayn is wiry and surprisingly strong, but Louis has the advantage of weight, managing to pin him down anytime they start to wrestle. A proper fistfight is another story—as Louis found out the authentic way a few days earlier, Zayn packs a punch.

One time, Zayn manages to get Louis onto his back, pressed to the ground, and Louis kicks up at him, trying to knock him off balance. He briefly falls forward, the opposite direction from what he should have. Louis is slow to react, and when his face is right next to Louis’, he whispers, “Roof, same time, tonight.” Louis gives him a small nod to show that he heard, and then Zayn is throwing his weight down on Louis’ hands, pinning his shoulders to the ground and declaring that he’s won the fight. Fucking cheater. Louis would argue if not for the fact that the instructor clearly hadn’t heard the exchange, and that for one brief moment, Zayn smiles and his eyes crinkle and his tongue presses against the inside of his teeth and the whole world slows.

Louis doesn’t argue against his victory, but he does manage to land a really good punch in Zayn’s gut in their next spar.

***

“Why did they let me volunteer?” Louis asks as he passes Zayn back his cigarette—Liam’s really breaking the rules if he’s smuggling Zayn more than one. It’s just the two of them, the wind, and city nightlife below them, and Louis still feels afraid when he says it. Still feels the urge to glance over his shoulder.

Zayn takes a drag, puffs out the smoke. “Drama,” he answers finally. “You volunteered to save your sister. ‘s a good story.”

“That’s disgusting.” Zayn’s probably not wrong, is the thing. If there’s one thing the Capitol would bend their rules for, it’s the sake of good entertainment. Louis knows the other tributes were talking about him today, and he knows that’s a big part of the reason why. Well, that and his entrance into the opening ceremonies. They’re not the only ones wondering, though: he wants to know why he was allowed to be there, too—a boy from a District that already had a boy tribute.

“It was brave of you,” Zayn says quietly.

“It was stupid of me,” Louis retorts, his cheeks warm. It was stupid. He didn’t even know if they’d let him volunteer in her place, the words just came out. And now she would be alive, sure, but he would be dead and she could just be reaped another year, when he’s not around to protect her. Any of his sisters could.

“Better get used to people calling you brave. That’s how Liam’s going to market you in your interview.” Zayn passes him the cigarette.

Louis doesn’t like that one bit. He doesn’t feel brave; he feels angry. And how does Zayn know that anyways—Liam must have told him. Again with Zayn and Liam. Louis takes a drag that lasts too long, and nearly doubles over from the coughing. He hates the taste, honestly, and if the Games miraculously don’t kill him, then smoking will. “Oh, I forgot, you and Liam tell each other _everything,_ don’t you?” He’s bitter and nasty, like the smoke in his lungs is spilling out in his voice.

“A lot of things,” Zayn says evenly. “He’d tell you a lot of things if you stopped being so passive aggressive around him.” He takes back the cigarette. Louis hates it when Zayn doesn’t rise to his bait.

The thing is that being around Liam fucking sucks. He’s there to help them, but Louis is painfully aware that ultimately, he can’t help them at all. That he’s been a mentor for six years and that under him, twelve tributes have died. He hasn’t been able to help them, has he? “How are we going to survive in the arena?” Louis asks bluntly, changing the subject to the thought that has bounced in his head ever since he set foot in the Training Center.

“A lot of luck.” At least Zayn is honest, even if the answer feels a little bit like Louis has been punched in the sternum. “We’ll lay low, hide. I’ll get us firewood.” Zayn says it without a smile.

“I’ll put band aids on our splinters.” Louis isn’t smiling, either.

“Everyone will kill each other, except for us.”

“I’ll tell Liam to send us a fucking coin. A nice one, you know, gold, not some shit bronze piece.”

They’re both silent then, neither of them willing to vocalize what will come next. Louis doesn’t even know what would come next. Only one winner.

“Do you think you could kill someone?” Zayn asks slowly. “Like, could you really do it?”

Louis looks resolutely at his hands. That’s the question, though, isn’t it? Is he a killer, or is he going to die in the first round of things? Is he going to live long enough to find out if he’s a killer? “I don’t know.” Add this to the ever-growing list of things that Louis does not know about himself. It seems like a pretty important one.

“I don’t think I could,” Zayn goes on, answering his own question. “I don’t think—I don’t want to ever find out, honestly.”

“Maybe if it was like in a fight, and I was fighting to protect someone,” Louis whispers. Tries to imagine himself beneath some faceless stranger, fighting, with his family on the sidelines, in some sort of immediate peril. “But if—if it was down to me and someone else, I couldn’t like track them down and do it, you know?” This is the reason he knows he will die. Winners in the Hunger Games are proactive. They kill before they have the chance to be killed. Like Liam with his poison—Louis can’t imagine himself doing that.

Zayn doesn’t say anything, just puffs out a breath of smoke, nearly managing to make it into a little ring. They both watch it dissipate as the wind catches it, and Louis suddenly feels either very old or very tired, like he’s either lived a thousand lifetimes or is sick to death of this one.

“What’re you going to do if you win?” he asks Zayn, and he takes a drag on the cigarette, rubbing his chest at the burning sensation.

“Try not to think about how I won.”

It’s not a good answer, but Louis suspects it’s an honest one. He tries to imagine winning for a brief moment. The money, the interviews, seeing his family again. He wonders if they would be disgusted by him, by the killer he would be. If they would avoid him. If Lottie would pity him. “I’m not sure it’s worth it.” Louis has never thought he wanted to die, but at least for now, death would be easier and quicker and less painful than life. Dying in the Games would mean he wouldn’t have to face his family after they’d seen him kill, or face the entire nation and pretend for the rest of his life that he was proud of what he’d done.

Zayn’s hand is on his shoulder, warm and gentle. When he looks over at the other boy, he first notices the way Zayn’s eyebrows are pinched together and his mouth is taut. Then he notices the warmth in his eyes and the way he holds open his arms, slightly. Louis steps into the hug without second guessing it, without letting himself think about what it means to accept comfort from someone who may end up killing him, and he lets his head fall against Zayn’s shoulder. He feels warm and strong, like he’s not afraid of anything, and Louis closes his eyes and breathes in the subtle smell of him. He feels safe, is the thing, which is ridiculous because no one can keep him safe, let alone Zayn Malik, District Twelve tribute. The sob in his throat catches him by surprise, and when he presses a hand to his face, it comes away wet. Zayn’s shoulder is shaking slightly beneath his head. When he steps away, breaking the embrace, he can see the redness around Zayn’s eyes, the way he hastily swipes a hand under his eyes, his nose, and he wonders if, under his cool mask, Zayn is actually just as unspeakably scared as he is.

***

The next day at the Training Center goes by entirely too quickly. Louis dedicates most of the day to various weapon stations, usually with Zayn by his side, and at the end of the day he feels no more ready for the Games than he did before. He’s jumpy and ready to snap at anything, and Zayn threatens to punch him again if he makes one more snide comment to him. He doesn’t know why he does this; he wants to stop lashing out even as he’s actively doing it, but everything in the world feels like it’s out of his control, even himself.

“We need to discuss your private sessions with the Gamemakers,” Liam begins at dinner. God, he sounds like he’s in lecture mode already, and Louis wants to chuck his knife across the table at him. Except that, despite spending a few hours at the fucking knife station, he still hasn’t managed to hit a target with the sharp side of the damn thing. “And the interviews. Only two days away.”

“I’m fine with Louis hearing about mine,” Zayn supplies quickly, shooting Louis a sharp look that suggests he suspects Louis’ plan to dump his bowl of hot soup on Liam’s lap.

“And there’s nothing to say about mine, so go for it,” Louis snaps. Private sessions are tomorrow morning, with scores being released midday. What is there to discuss? He has no discernible skills. What’s he supposed to do, cut open his fucking arm and then show off how well he can sew it closed? Maybe he’ll cut one of their arms instead. Preforming surgery is easier when it’s on someone else. Maybe they’ll have some knitting supplies all ready for him, and he can make them a fucking tea cozy.

Liam does go for it, launching into an in-depth discussion with Zayn about axes and machetes and cutting through target dummies. Louis completely tunes them out, somewhat revolted by the easy back-and-forth they have, how they are obviously comfortable with each other. It’s only when he hears his own name that he looks up, only to find both of them staring at him, Liam with disapproval and Zayn with amusement.

“What?” He speaks through a mouthful of food, not even caring when some of it lands on the all too nice tablecloth. Fuck the Capitol and their fineries, honestly.

“I suggested that for your private session, you demonstrate some of your knowledge of medicine,” Liam repeats impatiently. “Zayn’s mentioned that you have experience with treating wounds.”

Louis shoots a glare at Zayn. Fucking talking about him behind his back, typical. “Yeha, maybe I’ll just cut off a finger and show them how well I can close it back up. Great idea, Liam.”

“They’ll give you models of the human flesh in the assessment room. Any tool that was in the Training Center will be in that room,” Liam continues, obviously choosing to ignore Louis’ provocations. “It’s something, Louis. Show them you can do something.”

Louis flinches, glares hotly at his plate. He can’t do anything, is the thing. And Liam should fucking know that, because Liam’s many things but he’s not an idiot—he survived his Games.

“Lou,” Zayn says softly, and _Lou_ has fucking had it.

He slams his palms down against the table and stands up, almost shaking with how angry he is. There’s no point in fucking planning anything for his private session; he’s not going to do well, will get such a low score that the other tributes will pick him off first just because they know he will be easy. He opens his mouth, a thousand angry words on his tongue, but nothing makes it out, and he stands there looking like a fool until he spins on his heel and storms off to his room.

***

He goes to the roof at midnight, knowing without being told that Zayn will be there. He’s not wrong.

“You fucking promised me,” Zayn grits out before he can even say hello. “You promised you would let us help you.”

Louis stops dead in his tracks. So it’s going to be like _that_ , then.

“Liam’s not your enemy. God, he’s trying to help us. Help you. Do you ever think about what it’s like for him? It’s been six years since there was a District Twelve victor. That’s twelve dead kids, and he’s still trying.”

“What it’s like for _him_?” Louis sees red. “How fucking selfish of me, really, I should think more about Liam’s precious _feelings_. It’s only my fucking life, after all!” He’s shouting, so loud, and the emptiness of the night air seems to swallow his sound, leaving him sounding desperate instead of righteously angry.

“That’s not what I meant!” Zayn turns to face him, and the lines of his face are sharper, now, his features pinched into a scowl. “You’re not the only one suffering! Not everything is about you!” His voice cracks, breaks, and the hardness in his face falters. Louis freezes, almost terrified of what will happen, and Zayn looks away quickly, pressing a hand roughly to his face.

It’s pretty clear he’s not talking about Liam anymore.

Louis not unfeeling—he knows Zayn is suffering, too. He just hides it better, keeps it in more. He cried on the train, sure, and he cried a little last night, and maybe he’s crying now, but he isn’t like Louis. He’s not walking around feeling like the world is smashing him to pieces, and constantly looking for ways to smash it first, before it gets the chance. He’s not short-tempered or drowning in his own rage. Except maybe he is, and maybe that which Louis cannot keep from escaping him is what Zayn cannot let show.

“I’m trying,” he says honestly. It’s weak, this excuse, and it’s not entirely true: there are times that Louis lets himself be swept up in his self-destructive rage and wants to never emerge from it.

“Try harder, then.”

Louis doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t even really understand why it matters so much to Zayn—him doing poorly in interviews or in his private assessment won’t really affect Zayn in the arena. The crowd will eat Zayn up; he’s too gorgeous to not have sponsors. Louis’ not having any won’t hurt Zayn’s chances. “Why do you care?” It comes out raw rather than accusatory.

Zayn sighs, takes out the customary cigarette and lights it. He breathes in the smoke almost eagerly, and breathes it out slowly. “Don’t be an idiot,” he finally says, and offers the cigarette to Louis.

It’s not an answer, but Louis takes it and hopes that Zayn can tell that he’s sorry, anyways. Sorry that he’s such a pain, sorry that they’re going to die, sorry that he doesn’t understand how Zayn is holding both himself and Louis together.

***

“What on Earth did you do?” Zayn hisses at him, squeezing in beside Louis on the couch.

“What?” Louis isn’t sure what it is he’s done to piss Zayn off now. They’ve barely seen each other all day, separated for their private assessments with the Gamemakers.

Zayn gives him this frustrated look, a frown contorting the smoothness of his face. Louis wants to press a finger to the part where all the angry lines meet, just between his eyebrows, and smooth them back out. Yeah, okay, _Jesus_ , he should have gotten more sleep last night, clearly, if he’s having thoughts like that. “With the Gamemakers,” Zayn continues, aggravated. “They were—it was clear you did something. They basically ignored me when I came in, because they were all having some sort of urgent meeting.” He’s squinting at him now, as if narrowing his eyes will enable Zayn to read the truth straight off Louis’ face. “What. Did. You. Do.” He grits the words out, and Louis isn’t sure if it’s fear or anger that is marring his face now.

Suddenly part of Zayn’s speech sinks in, and Louis feels a bit guilty. The Gamemakers ignored Zayn. Shit. He didn’t think about that—he hadn’t been thinking much at all, actually, but even less so about what it might do to Zayn. “They were ignoring me, too,” he replies, defensive. And they had. They’d been having some sort of feast up on their platform, and he’d come in and introduced himself and they had barely glanced at him. Only a few had watched him while he did as Liam had suggested, cutting open and then closing several large wounds on the very realistically shaped human dummies.

Zayn gives him a look that clearly says he isn’t buying it. “Lou,” he says shortly, and it’s a warning.

Louis wants to shake him, suddenly, for the goddamn nickname. It’s crossing some sort of line that runs between friends and allies, and if there’s one thing Louis does not want or need, it’s a friend with him in the arena. He looks away, instead, and gives Zayn the truth. “They were ignoring me, and I got pissed, and I castrated the stupid human dummy and threw its bits at them.” It sounds much more daring when he says it out loud, but he hadn’t been going for daring; he hadn’t been going for anything, really.

Zayn doesn’t say anything, and when Louis looks over at him, he’s got a slender hand pressed to his mouth. His shoulder is shaking, just a little bit, and his eyes are closed, preventing Louis from gauging just how pissed he is.

“I’m sorry,” he offers quickly. “It wasn’t supposed to—I didn’t mean for them to ignore you.” They’d probably been discussing exactly what to do with him. He’s going to be the first to die in the game. They’ll probably put minefields just for him.

Zayn takes in a rough breath, and his hand falls away from his mouth—he’s laughing. Louis has never seen him laugh before, and feels this awful pain in his chest at the way Zayn’s eyes crinkle and his cheeks turn pink. He’s beautiful, and nothing is fair.

“Jesus, Louis.” He’s starting to sound almost hysterical, laughing so hard that he’s clutching at his gut with one hand. Louis feels a laugh bubbling up, and then they’re both laughing desperately, pressing fists to their mouths and arms to their stomachs. The door to the room opens, and Louis can’t even bring himself to look up at it.

“What’s so funny?” Liam demands, stepping into Louis’ line of sight. It’s sobering, this reminder that he has a mentor, that he’s only got three more days until the Games begin, that he has at most weeks left to live, and he feels his laughter die in his throat.

“Nothing,” he says numbly, moving away from Zayn so they are no longer pressed together. The other boy is still laughing, tears rolling down his cheeks, though he seems to be collecting himself.

“Only a few minutes until scores,” Liam says somewhat stiffly, and crosses the room to turn on the screen dominating much of the opposite wall. The symbol for the Capitol flashes across the screen, rainbow colored and intricate, just as gaudy and awful as the actual Capitol.

“Bet that the twins from Four get the same score,” Louis mutters to Zayn, which wrenches a little laugh from him. He tells himself it doesn’t count as making Zayn laugh when he’s still trying to stop the hysterics. Still, he feels a little warmer, and Zayn moves closer to him so their arms touch. It’s nice, this small comfort of actual human contact. Louis has always been a touchy sort of person, and the only person he’s touched in weeks with any level of affection has been Zayn.

“The girl will score higher,” Zayn counters, eyes warm and soft as they focus on Louis’ face.

“Lipstick Twin?” Louis scoffs back, his heart beating a little faster. “You’re on, Firewood.”

“Winner takes what, exactly?”

“We’ll think of something later.”

Zayn scoffs at him. “Leaving yourself room to collect whatever you want?” His face is open, warm, and Louis feels like he’s drowning.

“Absolutely,” Louis replies, and Zayn snorts. Are they—they aren’t flirting, are they? Louis doesn’t know anymore, and he doesn’t know what it means, or what it should mean. He really shouldn’t be flirting with Zayn, shouldn’t be getting attached to a boy who is going to die. _No._ He’s not attached—it doesn’t mean anything, he’s always liked a bit of friendly teasing. Still, he’s painfully aware of the pressure on his arm from Zayn’s body weight, the way the other boy looks at him from under thick eyelashes, the ghost of a smile still curving his cheeks.

“Scores,” Liam cuts in, and he turns up the volume on the screen.

Louis looks away, then, and focuses on the screen. They always announce the scores in increasing order of the Districts, the same order in which they attend their private sessions. He recognizes the tributes from One as some of the tributes that had laughed at his weak attempts at hand fighting in the Training Center. The boy scores considerably better than the girl, scoring an eight to her five. Not a great year for the Career tributes from One, although it is sometimes strategic to purposefully get an average or even low score. Louis hasn’t even thought about what his score will mean for him, if it will even affect how quickly he will die. Too high a score, and the Careers will gang up on him early to eliminate him as a threat. Too low a score, and other tributes may kill him just because he’s easy, or to steal any supplies he has. If he scores in the middle, he could be the target of the Careers looking for a little blood or weaker tributes trying to protect themselves. He’s fucked no matter what his score is—he’s the second male tribute from Twelve, and no one knows why he’s there in the first place.

Two’s scores are average, and having seen how well the boy from Two handled an axe in the Training Center, Louis bets that was deliberate. He wonders at the position they must be in, where they have the luxury of having skills to downplay at all. Where they have mentors, instead of a mentor, and these mentors have successfully coached several tributes to victory in previous years. Career tributes have won four of the last six Games. He’s impatient, can barely remember what Three’s tributes score even as the numbers fade off the screen, and then Lipstick Twin’s score flashes across the screen. Ten. Fucking figures. He shoots Zayn a quick look, raising one of his eyebrows. Zayn rolls his eyes, and then Plain Twin’s score appears. Nine.

“Guess I’ll be collecting whatever I want,” Zayn whispers to him. Louis tries to ignore him and the way he can see his smirk out of the corner of his eye. He’s only a little bit of a sore loser.

From there, the scores mostly blend together. Zayn sits up a little straighter beside him when Perrie’s face and score appear on the screen, and Louis tries very hard not to tense up. She scores a seven, just better than average, and Louis tries not to think about how his score will likely be half that. One tribute from Seven scores a two, which is the lowest score both of the night and of the past few years. The youngest tribute of this years Games—a small, dark boy from Ten who Louis thinks must be around thirteen—scores surprisingly well, managing an eight. It’s unusual for the younger tributes to do well at all in the Games, and Louis cannot successfully erase the thought of Lottie being younger than this boy, of what Lottie would have scored.

When the scores from Eleven’s tributes fade from the screen, Louis can feel Zayn reach over towards him and then their palms are pressed together and their fingers are interlaced and Louis holds his breath without even knowing why. His own face appears on the screen, some ugly stock photo of him that they must have taken from his school back in Twelve, and the number eight appears, stays for a few heartbeats, and then fades. He knows he’s gaping at the screen. Why would they…? Then Zayn’s face is appearing on the screen and he wonders where on Earth they dug up that picture of Zayn, because he doesn’t look that lifeless—that dead in the eyes—in person at all. Then the number six appears by his blank face, and Zayn’s hand tightens around his.

He wonders if Zayn blames him for that six, if he would’ve done better if the Gamemakers had actually paid him any attention. He’s not sure what to say, and they wait in silence as Zayn’s face fades away and the Capitol symbol bursts into color across the screen. Liam stands up and turns it off, turns to face them, his arms crossed across his chest.

Louis hates the appraising expression on Liam’s face as he looks them up and down. He’s undoubtedly wondering why Louis scored higher than his precious Zayn, and Louis is wondering the same thing, damn it. He’s seen Zayn in the Training Center, watched how quickly he got the hang of shooting a bow or using a machete against an opponent with a spear. He was by no means an expert in either of those things, but he learned faster than Louis at least; it was clear that he was stronger from years of preforming actual physical labor, working in his fathers bakery and cutting wood and hand carrying deliveries.

“I castrated the dummy,” Louis snaps before Liam can ask him how he managed to get an eight. He pulls his hand away from Zayn’s, rubbing the sweat off on his pants. He doesn’t even understand why being angry and lashing out would enable him to score higher, but clearly it did.

“Well, that would do it,” replies Liam, clearly taken aback. Zayn doesn’t say anything, but Louis can see him trying to hide a smile behind his hand. “At least we can play that up in the interview.”

God, the interview. He knows that will be all Liam will talk about over dinner, and that he’ll spend basically half of tomorrow privately coaching him, coming up with some strategy to make Louis likeable. Good fucking luck, Liam. The bravery angle is not going to work.

“Clearly I should’ve thrown an axe at their dinner,” Zayn comments. Louis winces, wishing he had gone after Zayn in their private sessions so that he wouldn’t have messed up the other boy’s chances. Zayn is smiling, though, so maybe he isn’t holding a grudge.

“You can do that during your interview,” Liam says, and it’s the first time Louis has ever heard him make a joke. It’s unsettling, and Louis wonders at the three of them, sitting in this room weeks away two of them will die, having an almost normal conversation. It feels weird, like he shouldn’t be allowed to feel normal. Like if he’s not actively suffering then he’s let the Capitol convince him that the Games are anything less than absolute evil.

It feels wrong, so Louis bites back any light-hearted words that he might have said, and looks away. He reminds himself that he’s going to die. He’s going to die, and Zayn will either watch him die or he’ll have to watch Zayn die. He doesn’t know which would be worse.

***

That night, they share another cigarette on the roof, and Zayn tells him about his family. He hears about how Zayn’s father has struggled for years to keep the family bakery afloat so that Zayn will not have to go work in the mines. He hears about how Zayn’s mother has always tried to keep him from growing up too fast, and what goes unsaid is that he already has—they both have, everyone in these Games has grown up too fast. He hears about Zayn’s sisters, his cousins, the feral cat that drinks the milk he sets out every morning. He doesn’t say much, but the stories pour out of Zayn anyways, like blood from a wound. When Zayn eventually falls silent, it’s because he’s crying, and Louis doesn’t know what to do. He ends up slinging an arm over Zayn’s shoulders, and the other boy turns to cry into his shirt, and Louis lets him, because he feels the same way.

***

“You’ll look lovely,” Harry tells him a day and a half later, brushing some sort of powder across his cheeks.

He wants to slap the brush out of Harry’s hands. He’s already in his interview outfit, specially designed by Harry Styles (supposedly this is a big deal), and while it’s no canary, it’s hardly much of an improvement in his eyes. Harry went with a more literal coal theme this time around, and his pants are tight and dusty black, wrinkled in such a way that gives them the appearance of coal’s texture. His shirt is high-collared and heavily structured, the same dusty black of his pants, save for little seams set in red and yellow, tiny veins of fire in the coal. It’s much more subdued than he could have hoped for, but it’s still stiff and uncomfortable, and he would hate anything Harry put on him.

“Try not to rip this one off,” Harry continues, and daps something moist against Louis’ lips. “I worked hard on this.”

“Why did they let me volunteer?” Louis asks blankly. Liam hadn’t had a good answer, either, and both of them agreed that his volunteering was sure to come up in the interview today. He wanted to feel prepared. He had to present himself well—Liam had drilled him with the knowledge that getting sponsors was the difference between life and death in the arena. When Louis had practically thrown a plate at him, Liam had conceded that the bravery angle wouldn’t really work for Louis. He told Louis to downplay the anger, instead, and to play up the boyish attitude, that he thought the latter would appeal more, that it would explain—but not excuse—his entrance to the opening games as well as his interesting performance in private sessions. The audience would not be privy to the specifics of the latter, of course, but it was a question that pretty commonly came up in the interviews.

Harry pauses, swiping his thumb underneath Louis’ lip to catch some of the makeup he had mussed. “Having a twelve year old in the Games is never popular,” Harry answers, slowly. “And having two boy tributes is a twist. Having one that volunteered for his little sister—an even bigger twist. It’s a play on the audience’s emotions.”

“So, more drama?” Louis’ voice is flat. He’s heard this answer before, and it’s no more satisfying this time.

“Hey, that doesn’t mean you can’t win!” Harry smiles at him, and it looks strained.

“I only got an eight because I was daring and offensive.” Louis stares straight ahead, unblinking. “Neither of those things will help me win.”

Harry puts a broad hand on his shoulder, and Louis looks at him, takes in the green eyes and the winged eyeliner and the glitter ghosting across his cheeks. “I’ll be rooting for you,” he tells Louis seriously.

Louis blinks, his eyes suddenly stinging. He should be angry. He should be angry that Harry is hoping he kills all the other tributes, but it’s clear that Harry feels sorry for him, that Harry probably genuinely wants him to survive, and not just for the exposure it would bring him as a stylist. Thank you. The words are lodged in his throat.

“You’re all done!” Harry exclaims, flicking him on the nose. He glances at his wrist, at the ornate golden watch that rests there. “And just in time! Interviews begin in ten minutes.” He smiles broadly at Louis.

“After you,” Louis replies unsteadily, and he takes the hand that Harry offers him, letting his stylist lead him out of his room, out of the Training Center. The interviews are held in a separate building, where a full crew will be working to broadcast them live to the entire nation. They are not mandatory viewings, unlike the Games recap that will happen after a victor emerges, but nearly everyone watches them, anyways.

When they’d shared a cigarette last night, Zayn told him to just wing the interview. Honestly, he probably would, although he’d at least try to follow Liam’s advice. Less anger, more teenage spirit. Boyish Attitude. Right. Like that would be believable.

They run into Zayn and Niall just outside the interview hall. Zayn is dressed very similarly, in dark, tight clothes that flash a vibrant red if the light catches it in the right way. His eyes look more amber than brown, and dark eyeliner draws attention to the fullness of his lashes, while gold dust scattered across the high points on his cheeks and brow highlight the angles of his face. He looks ethereal, making Louis’ breath catch in his throat, and Louis hates to admire anything the Capitol produces. Zayn, however, is something that he admires despite any of his intentions.

“You did wonders with his makeup.” Harry praises Niall with a friendly clap on the back. The two of them fall in step easily, two over-adorned peas in a pod.

“You ready?” Louis asks Zayn as they follow their stylists up a flight of stairs.

“As I’ll ever be,” Zayn says back, and reaches over to squeeze his hand once, tightly. They make their way and into a steel and blown green glass building. Inside they find chaos: crewmembers dashing to correct floors and guiding crowds of Capitol citizens into the appropriate elevators to make it to their seats.

They eventually make it backstage, so to speak, and Louis gets an eyeful of all of the other tributes with their stylists. It’s like a menagerie of bad fashion sense, and Louis and Zayn stay to the back, out of the commotion of last minute wardrobe changes and retouched makeup. They will be the last tributes to go on, will get to sit in the front row of the audience while all the other tributes are interviewed, one by one. Louis knows he will be interviewed before Zayn, as the female tributes usually go before the male tributes of their respective Districts. He’s not a girl, but he’s standing in for one nonetheless. The indirect reminder of Lottie is a punch in his gut, sudden and sharp.

Soon they’re being ushered to their seats, and Louis is relieved that they are seated by District rather than by gender—he slips into his seat beside Zayn, and presses their arms together. Liam is sitting a few rows behind them, he knows, delegated to the back of the mentors simply by virtue of being District Twelve, and Harry and Niall are across the room, in the second row, sitting among the other stylists. On the stage, cameramen dart around with cables, and as the seats in the back slowly fill with people, the noise in the room escalated to a dull roar. Louis presses two fingers to his temple, pinching his eyes shut, and trying to just focus on the steady pressure of Zayn’s body leaning into him.

The noise in the room suddenly settles, and when he looks up, a figure has appeared onstage and is holding out his hands in a plea for silence. It’s Ben Winston, the flamboyant man who has run the Games interviews for almost fifteen years, and he is dressed even more garishly than usual. Yellow and blue pinstriped pants, green snakeskin boots, and a truly heinous floral shirt, buttoned up to the collar. His appearance indicates that the show is about to begin, and sure enough, the lights dim, and a spotlight darts around stage before settling on Ben.

“Welcome to the sixty-fifth Hunger Games!” he exclaims, clapping his hands together. The crowd erupts into applause, and Louis grimaces, feeling almost sick. It’s going to be a long evening.

***

Interviews last only a few minutes per tribute, and the crowd loves Ben enough that almost anything he says will warrant some sort of verbal reaction. Personally, Louis hates the friendly persona, the back and forth that he attempts with all the tributes. He’s part of the Capitol; he’s no one’s friend, no matter how interested he pretends to be in each tribute’s story. Lipstick Twin tells him she’s always planned on winning the Games, and he urges the crowd to cheer for her and her brother, calling their relationship “sibling rivalry.” Lipstick Twin looks upset at this, but clearly swallows anything she might have said. Perrie tells him about her three best friends at home, and he laughs aloud with her, booming at a story she tells about the time they all accidentally liked the same boy. Her laugh is jumpy and her smile sad, but his is wide and toothy, fake. The boy from Ten is painfully shy, and Ben spends much of the interview coaxing him to admit what his favorite food in the Capitol is.

The entire thing is utterly disgusting.

And then suddenly it’s his turn, and his stomach is in knots and his hands are sweating. Ben smiles at him as he climbs the stairs to the stage, and he briefly pictures himself punching him. He shakes his hand instead, sits in the chair opposite him, quickly enough that the audience probably can’t see his knees shaking.

“Louis,” Ben begins, balancing his elbows on his knees. Louis braces himself. “The second boy tribute from Twelve. I think everyone in the audience is wondering why you are here—not that you don’t deserve to be here!” He gestures grandly at Louis, smile unchanged. “Any idea why the Capitol chose you, in a way?” He winks at Louis, as if this is some sort of giant conspiracy that the two of them are in on. Boyish attitude. Boyish attitude.

“For the drama,” Louis replies airily, managing to suppress the anger out of his voice. He’s so nervous, he may puke. Or punch Ben in the face. “You know how it is.” He waves his hand, and he doesn’t even recognize himself. He doesn’t want to look at Zayn, or Liam, or even Harry, because he doesn’t want to see confusion or disgust or _approval_.

Ben laughs, high and fake. “I think we all do,” he says with a smirk, and the audience joins him in laughing. “They made a good choice, what with your entrance in the opening ceremony. Can you tell us what that was about?”

He was pissed, that’s what that was about. He can’t do this. He can’t laugh and say that it was performance art, or teenage angst, or whatever the fuck Liam wants him to say. He forces a smile on his face, and he can tell that it comes out as more of a snarl. “I was expressing myself.” The words are clipped, and he’s got to hand it to Ben Winston: the man manages to school his expression into one of amusement.

“You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen!” Ben laughs, winking at the audience. Is that all he ever does? Fucking smile and laugh and wink? “How are you getting along with the other tribute from Twelve? I hope he doesn’t think you’re stealing his thunder, being the unexpected second male tribute!”

Louis goes still. “If you’re looking for a controversy, you’re not finding it here,” he retorts, and it comes out harsher than he intends.

Even that doesn’t break the enormous smile on Ben’s face. “I admire tributes that stick together,” he says to Louis. “We have time for one last question, and I think what everyone wants to know is what you were thinking when you volunteered for your sister. Did you suspect that you would actually be allowed to compete in the Games, given there was already a male tribute chosen?”

The crowd goes quiet, then, and Louis knows the eyes of thousands of people, and cameras broadcasting this to hundreds of thousands more, are all on him. Lottie. His stomach lurches. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says slowly, and now he’s speaking to Lottie, who will be watching this live no matter what else may be going on in her life. “I just—I love her, and I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.”

Ben makes a cooing sound, and the audience joins in, and Louis needs to leave this stage before he gets sick. Thankfully, his time is up, and Ben rises to shake his hand and lead the audience in one last round of applause for him. He passes by Zayn as he returns to his seat, and he’s brave enough to look him in the eye. He’s nervous, clearly, but he smiles so broadly at Louis that Louis cannot help smiling back. He holds up a fist, and Louis bumps it with his own as they pass each other.

He misses the very first thing Ben says to Zayn, but Zayn’s reply is quick and sharp and the audience laughs. They’ll laugh at anything, honestly, but Zayn is laying on the charm. He smiles that crinkly smile at Ben when Ben asks if he’s tried the hot tub in his room, and Louis knows it’s fake, but he kind of wants to throttle Ben for that. Then Ben asks him about home, about his friends, and Louis’ heart twinges at the momentarily lost expression in his face.

“I—“ Zayn looks around, clearly not knowing what to say, and his eyes fall on Louis. Blue and amber-brown. Louis raises his chin pointedly, and is filled with a sort of pride when Zayn mimics him, turning back to face Ben. “My best friends at home are my family, really,” he says, and it comes out somewhat thinly. “I love them to death.”

“Handsome, and family-oriented, ladies,” Ben mock-whispers to the audience. Louis bites his tongue. “What about away from home, then? Made any friends since you’ve been to the Capitol?”

“My stylist, Niall, is an absolute blast,” he replies easily, smiling in Niall’s direction. There’s a smattering of applause, and Niall stands up, making exaggeratedly pompous hand gestures until Harry tugs him back down into his seat. “And Liam is the best mentor anyone could ask for. I’d consider him a friend. And Louis, of course.” He smiles again at Ben.

Louis shouldn’t be happy that Zayn clearly cares about him, nor should he care about Zayn right back—their friendship is going to be short-lived, and dangerous. For all his efforts to not like Zayn Malik, it’s happened anyways, and he feels a warm feeling spread through him as Zayn says his name onstage. It’s stupid, but he smiles a little.

“The two of you seem to have really hit it off,” Ben comments warmly. “I assume we can look forward to an alliance in the arena?”

“We’ll be looking out for each other, yeah,” Zayn confirms. “Firewood and band aids, you know.”

Ben is obviously confused, but smiles broadly anyways. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have.” He shakes Zayn’s hand, and then stands alone onstage, making a few jokes that have the audience laughing and Louis rolling his eyes. Zayn is the last tribute to go, and all that’s left are a few closing remarks by Ben and then the rest of the evening and then the Games in the morning. Having the interview over with is a sudden and painful reminder that he has about twelve hours until he’s in the arena. He’s not going to sleep, he knows. He feels unsettled, almost wired. Zayn sits back down then, interrupting his thoughts.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly. He doesn’t know what he’s thanking Zayn for, exactly, but the Zayn takes his hand and squeezes, and he closes his eyes and tries not to think about how little time they have.

***

Zayn doesn’t have a cigarette that night.

What he does have is a pile of blankets and pillows and a cup of tea.

“What’s this?” Louis asks, gesturing at the makeshift nest on the rooftop.

“I want to be up here.” Zayn holds the mug in both hands, looking out over the city. “Last night, you know.” His voice wavers, and Louis understands.

He sits down beside Zayn, crossing his legs and balancing on a pillow. “Hope it’s not like, the Arctic,” he comments lightly. “Never was one for cold.”

“I can’t even hunt,” Zayn whispers. “I’m going to starve.”

“We can eat plants.”

“I don’t—what if there are none, or they’re all poisonous?”

“Well,” Louis says softly. “We did spend time at the plant station.”

Zayn doesn’t laugh.

“We’ll look out for each other,” Louis continues, rushed. Zayn’s always the one who is collected. He doesn’t know what to say now that he’s not. He’s not used to being the strong one. “Firewood and band aids.”

“I’m afraid of dying,” Zayn says, as if Louis hadn’t said anything. “But at least that’d be easy.”

“I don’t want you to die.” Louis blushes, after, and looks away. He needs to let go of that, because they both are going to die, and he needs to accept that. No matter how many times he’s told himself this over the past few days—weeks, even—he cant manage to smother out the little embers of hope.

“Kiss me,” Zayn blurts out suddenly.

Louis stares at him, his breath caught in his throat.

“Kiss me,” he repeats, and his voice is shaky. “I won that stupid bet. I want you to kiss me.” He looks at Louis, and his eyes are full of tears and so, so, beautiful, and he opens his mouth to say more. He doesn’t get a chance.

Louis kisses him. It’s clumsy, because they’re sitting far apart and he nearly topples them over with the way he shifts his weight onto Zayn, and because he’s only kissed one person in his life and that hadn’t mattered at all. This matters, somehow, and he tries to kiss like it matters to him. Zayn’s mouth is so soft, his hands so gentle when they reach to touch Louis’ jaw, his cheeks. He tastes like tea, like salt, and he’s crying and shaking but he parts his mouth a little so their tongues can touch and Louis is gone.

He moves a little closer, losing himself in Zayn’s tongue and his taste and the scrape of his stubble on Louis’ chin. Zayn cups his face with one hand, holding him as if he’s made of glass, and Louis _is_ , they both are. Two delicate things, ready to shatter at any moment. Zayn sucks on his lip, tentatively, and he makes a little sound, pressing closer so their chests touch. He wants to forget everything, forget who he is and what he’s going to do, and so far, kissing Zayn is doing wonderful things for that goal.

Then Zayn pulls away and his face is splotchy and wet, his lips pink and swollen. He’s sniffling, eyes puffy, but he gives Louis a little smile that Louis is quick to return. “Stay out here with me?” he asks, hesitant.

“Yeah,” Louis whispers back, and presses a hand against his lips, trying to press that memory into his skin.

They spend the night on the roof, cocooned in blankets and wrapped up in each other. It’s dark and windy and tearful, but they have each other and eventually sleep comes.


	2. Firewood and Band Aids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All trigger warnings/tags apply.

His stomach is in knots as he climbs out of the hovercraft. A wall towers above him, domineering, and he knows the arena is just on the other side of it. Harry is just in front of him, leading him towards the base of the wall, down several flights of stairs, towards the clear glass tube that he know will transport him up into the arena. He is already wearing the clothes the Capitol provided for all the tributes: a slim two-piece, lightweight long trousers tucked into thick black boots that hit his leg mid-calf, a long sleeved shirt made of some porous fabric that allows air to ghost across his skin as he moves. The entire set is a light tan color, accented by bits of orange and yellow. Probably will help with camouflage, Harry told him as he had helped him into the clothes.

“Liam wants me to remind you that your first priority is to find water,” Harry tells him as they continue to practically jog down the stairs. “He says that dehydration will kill you faster than anything else out there.”

“I know,” Louis says, and it comes out raspy. He has barely spoken that day.

“Find Zayn, find water,” Harry adds. “And then, just be smart.” The stairs have ended, dropping them at the beginning of a long hallway. Double doors sit at the other end, two Peacekeepers stationed outside them.

“I know,” Louis repeats. Be smart. Keep his head down, more like. Liam’s emphasized that the best chance they have is to run and hide and avoid all the other tributes.

The Peacekeepers hold the doors open for them, and they step through them, into a small room with a glass cylinder on one end. Louis takes a deep breath, tugging the sleeves of his shirt down, and takes a step toward it. He’s stopped by one of Harry’s hands, warm and big on his shoulder.

“Louis,” Harry says, and his eyes are wide and shiny. “Don’t give up out there.” He frowns after he says it, and Louis wonders if there’s something he would add if not for the cameras in the room.

He doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t have to: Harry hauls him into a hug, pressing Louis head to his chest, and then lets him go just as suddenly. “I’m rooting for you,” Harry says, and gives him a little push towards the cylinder.

There’s a slender opening in the side of the cylinder, and Louis squares his shoulders as he steps through it. The base of the cylinder is metal, and he knows it will lift him up through the ceiling and into the arena, hidden from outside view by towering concrete walls. He turns to face Harry, filled with some unforeseen calm, and the door to the cylinder slides shut, locking him in. Harry smiles at him, waves, and then the platform is rising and he passes through the ceiling and Harry is gone.

It’s all black around him, and in the darkness his sense of direction is gone. He can’t tell which way the platform is moving, just that the glass walls are around him and won’t let him escape. He finds it harder to breathe, trapped, and he briefly considers whether or not the Capitol would think to have backup oxygen in the cylinder. Then there’s a light above him, and he’s heading straight toward it, the glass walls of the cylinders falling down to stay in the dark as the platform lifts him through a circular hole in the ceiling.

He emerges in the arena, momentarily blinded by sunlight.

The first thing he notices is the dryness in the air. When he breathes in it’s clear and crisp, void of any moisture. Then he looks around, notices that the tributes are arranged in a circle, each standing on a small circular platform just like him. In the center of the circle is a pile of backpacks and weapons, a bow and arrow, a spear. It’s meant to lure them into conflict over supplies, he knows, and while there are also backpacks lying about further from the center, closer to the edges, they probably do not contain as valuable of supplies. He shifts his weight on the platform, trying to find Zayn. He finally spots him on the exact opposite of the circle—fuck. They’re too far away to read each other’s lips, but he tries to make eye contact, jerking his head towards one of the peripheral backpacks. They need supplies, but Louis knows they wouldn’t survive the bloodbath that will begin in the center. He thinks Zayn nods back, and he’s going to assume the other boy understood him.

It seems that the circle of tributes is in the base of some sort of small valley, with hills rising up around them, blocking their view of the rest of the arena. The hills are spotted with short, tough grasses and bushes; overwhelmingly, the terrain seems to consist of jagged, dry little plants. He can spot only a few trees, and they’re short, twisted, just as brown as the earth beneath them. He thinks blithely that these Games are going to be quick, then, because with so little cover, it’s going to be nearly impossible to hide from other tributes.

How much time has gone by? They have to stay on these platforms for a minute, and the platforms will count them down for the last ten seconds. He’s antsy, less afraid than he thought he would be; he just wants to run, grab a backpack, and keep running. He wishes he were in better shape. The platform beneath him emits a beep, then, and then after a pause, a second beep. He bends his knees, spreading his feet, and tries to take deep breaths. He’ll need all the air he can get in a few seconds. He stares at the backpack that’s roughly equidistant from him and Zayn and on the edge of the circle. Time slows to a crawl, spaced by intermittent beeps.

Then the platform gives out a long, louder beep, and he leaps off it, hitting the ground already running. He knocks shoulders with a smaller girl, and he stumbles, thinking that he’s fortunate none of the tributes have secured weapons yet. Out of the corner of his eye, he can tell that the fastest of the tributes are nearing the pile of backpacks, and he runs faster, because he needs to be long gone by the time the Career tributes get weapons and organize. He reaches the backpack at the same time as a younger boy—the one from Ten. Their hands clasp on the backpack at the same time, and Louis yanks it, hard, ripping it from his fingers. He’s grateful for his age, then—though he’s not particularly tall, he’s eighteen, older and bigger than most of the other tributes. The boy darts around him, clearly deciding that this fight would not be worth it, and Louis slings the backpack over his shoulders, looking for Zayn.

He’s sprinting towards Louis, a backpack over his shoulders and a wild look in his eyes. Behind him, running, is a girl with a knife the length of Louis’ forearm—Louis spins on his heels, taking off in the opposite direction as fast as he can. Adrenaline lends him speed, and he runs flat out, reaching the base of the hill. His thighs are burning, but he keeps going. He can hear footsteps behind him, ragged breathing, and he hopes it’s Zayn, but he can’t afford to turn and check. They’re halfway up the hill, and his lungs are burning almost as badly as his legs—he’s never been a fast runner, but he’s never had to run for his life, either.

By the time he reaches the top of the hill, his hands are shaking and his vision is fuzzy. The sudden flatness eases the burning in his legs, but he doesn’t dare let himself slow. Up ahead of him, he can tell the hill dips back down, slanting down into another valley, and he runs desperately for the edge. Running downhill will be easier, assuming he doesn’t lose his footing, and he honestly cannot run much further. When he reaches the edge, he has just a moment to realize that it’s more of a cliff than a gentle downward slope, and then his foot isn’t hitting solid ground, and he’s falling.

He’s in the air just long enough for panic to take over, and then he hits the ground, hard, the breath squished out of his lungs. The side of the hill is steep enough that he keeps falling, sliding and rolling down the side of the hill, through bushes and over rocks. His backpack protects his back somewhat, and he has just enough of his wits about him to know to duck his head and cover his face. He can feel the whip of sticks and leaves slapping at him as he goes by, and he tries to reach out and get a enough of a grip on anything to stop his fall. His fingers drag through scratchy grass and dirt, and then he’s colliding with the trunk of a tree, his breath punched out of him, all the air leaving his lungs so quickly that when he opens his mouth to scream, nothing comes out.

Then a heavy weight is colliding with his back, shoving him harder into the tree, and he thinks he blacks out, just for a moment. His breath comes back to him in a rush, and he’s hyperventilating, and possibly crying, and everything hurts. His chest aches, and his head is spinning, and when he tries to move, he’s hit with a bolt of nausea. He manages to prop himself up just enough that he’s puking onto the ground instead of on himself. He’s barely eaten anything that day, had been too nervous, so it’s mostly bile that comes up, and it burns his throat, foul and thick.

“Louis,” Zayn groans, and if Louis weren’t currently puking, he would be grateful that it was Zayn pressed behind him. “She didn’t jump.”

He finishes retching, and spits the remainder of bile out of his mouth. He doesn’t know if he can move. They lost her. Or rather, she wasn’t stupid enough to jump off a cliff at full speed. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t follow them, at a safer speed, or on a less steep portion of the hill. They had to—

“We have to move,” Zayn says urgently, and his weight is gone, and Louis can hear him groaning in pain as he slowly gets to his feet.

He wants to curl in on himself, cradle his stomach, and sleep. He hopes he doesn’t have a concussion—he didn’t hit his head on anything particularly hard, and the nausea was probably due to being punched in the gut by a fucking tree. That doesn’t help his head to stop spinning, or his limbs from shaking, but he manages to sit up, open his eyes. When he looks up in the direction they’d fallen, he can’t quite see to the top of the cliff, but he realizes how lucky they’d been. The sheer drop was less than four meters, and the rest of their fall was cushioned by bushes, whereas if they’d jumped only ten or so feet to the side, they’d have landed on jagged rocks.

He takes the hand that Zayn offers him, and he bites his lip at the pain in his legs, his stomach, as he straightens up, getting to his feet. It’s only the knowledge that he will be dead if he stays that keeps him on his feet. “Let’s go,” he grits out, and Zayn nods. He has blood dripping from a cut above his eyebrow, and he’s got dirt matted to his face, his clothes. Louis has never seen him look so determined.

He lets Zayn lead, and follows in his exact footsteps as they make their way down the rest of the hill. His stomach is still rolling, painful and uneasy, and he can tell his breathing is still much too fast, from either shock or the aftereffects of adrenaline. He knows they need to stop and take stock of their injuries at some point, but that time is not now, when the bloodbath is happening only a few hundred meters away and the other tributes could be on their trail. The boom of the cannon sounds once, twice, three times, and Louis flinches each time, trying not to picture it.

Then they reach the bottom of the hill and the terrain flattens out, staying level until the next hill, which rises up maybe five kilometers away. Zayn looks over his shoulder at him, and then starts to jog. Louis follows him, feeling like he’s falling apart, but he forces himself to focus on the steady pounding of his feet and the evenly spaced footprints Zayn is leaving for him to step in.

***

They run as far as they can, taking breaks to walk when they physically cannot breathe. They make it over the next hill, the following valley, and the next hill after that before the sun begins to set. The hills seem to be further apart as they get farther from the starting point of the arena, but the foliage remains sparse and mostly consisting of short, prickly bushes more grey than green and tufts of a rough yellow grass. It’s quite clear that they should expect no rain, and although the presence of plants indicates there’s at least some water, somewhere, they have yet to find any. Luckily, their backpacks had come with bottles already filled with water, perhaps a day or two’s worth at the most, and they’re careful to sip it throughout the day. Also in their bags are some sort of rolled up sleeping bag, a small flashlight, a few chewy bars that are thick and hearty, full of nuts, and a small knife. The blade is not even as long as Louis’ fingers, but it’s sharp, clearly meant as a tool rather than a weapon. They don’t see any other tributes that day, but they do hear the cannon boom several more times. Louis counts ten. Ten deaths in the bloodbath.

The sky is purple and orange and they’re on the top of a hill when they decide to stop for the night. They haven’t found any source of water yet, but they’re exhausted and it’s getting dark. With their position on the ridge, they can see kilometers in any direction, and, as Zayn points out, once they lay down they will be practically invisible amongst the short bushes and trees. Hiding in plain sight.

“No fire,” Louis says, as he sinks down to sit on the ground. “Not that I know how to start one, anyways.” He lifts his shirt, and even in the fading light, the mottled purple and red bruises across his stomach are clear.

Zayn sucks in a breath, and lightly presses a hand to his skin. Louis flinches away, swatting his hand, and adds, “Look at my back, will you? Tell me how bad it is.”

Zayn nods and moves behind, lifting the fabric of Louis’ shirt away from his skin. “You’ve got some cuts here,” he says, running his hand along Louis sides. “But they’re closed up. And bruises here.” He lightly touches Louis’ lower back, and even that light touch hurts. “Not as bad as your stomach, though.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” he replies. Leaning over hurts. Sitting up hurts. He can’t tell if his stomach is just badly bruised, or if the injuries go deeper than that. It doesn’t really matter, though, because he doesn’t have any way or finding out, let alone treating a more serious injury. “Let me look at you.”

Zayn moves to sit in front of him, rolling up his shirt. His back is as lovely as the rest of him, even as dirty as it is, and he’s got a similar spattering of bruises across his lower back, purple fading into the even brown of his skin. It looks painful, but not terribly so. Louis lets his fingers press into the center of one of the bruises, and Zayn shifts under the touch. “Can you look at my face? The cut over my eye has been stinging all day.” Zayn’s voice is rough.

“Turn around, then.” He does, and he’s blushing, just a little. Louis can feel his own face warming.

Looking at his cut. Okay. He leans closer, touching the area around it. It’s a thin line, about the length of Louis’ thumb, and while it has long stopped bleeding, it’s still open, red and inflamed. It doesn’t seem to have dirt in it, but if it’s deep enough to not have closed already, infection definitely could be a problem. “Looks like it might get infected, honestly. Your call on whether we use the water to flush it. And the stinging was probably from sweat getting in it.”

“Is it going to kill me?” Zayn asks, a small smile twisting at his face.

“Doubtful.” Louis stares at that smile, suddenly wanting to kiss him.

“Then I’ll wait until we actually find some water.” He leans closer, still smiling, and Louis gives in, closing the distance between their mouths.

He’s just as soft as Louis remembers, and it’s rougher, this kiss, rough like the dirt on their faces. Louis takes Zayn’s lip between his teeth without even thinking about it, and Zayn is the one making the little noises, this time, and tugging on Louis’ hair to angle his head better. Zayn tastes salty, from the sweat, but also something more, something indescribable that must just be Zayn. They end up with Louis on his lap, legs locked behind his back as they cling to each other, all teeth and fists in clothing and raw noises.

Zayn runs a hand down his back and he arches into the touch, trying without words to tell him to keep going. He doesn’t know what they’re doing, what he wants Zayn to do, but it feels good, and he wants it, wants more. Zayn groans, a little, and one of his hands lightly presses against Louis’ bum. He shudders at the touch, rolls his hips back against Zayn’s hand, and oh—he’s hard, underneath him, Zayn is hard. He grinds down immediately, swallowing the noise that Zayn makes into his mouth, and then the unmistakable sound of a cannon booming has him tearing himself away, chest heaving.

Eleven. He stares at Zayn, whose eyes are wide and dark and whose mouth is pink and swollen. Eleven people have died today, what are they doing? He doesn’t say anything, but even with how dark it’s becoming, he can see a little of his own horror reflected in Zayn’s face. He clears his throat, and wills his own erection to go away, and turns around to get out his sleeping bag, spread it across the ground. He sits on top of it, and avoids looking at the other boy, opting instead to pick at a seam on his pants.

“We should eat,” Zayn says, a few minutes later. He’s leaning against a rock next to Louis, on top of his own sleeping roll. “But once we finish the bars I don’t know what we’ll have.” He sounds normal, and Louis relaxes at the distinctly casual tone. The problem of food is a welcome distraction.

“Any idea how to hunt?” Louis asks. “Because all we have is the knives, and I can’t do anything with them.” They’re not likely to die from starvation, as that will take weeks, but being hungry will make them much more likely to die in a variety of other ways. Being hungry will make them slow, both in mind and body, and make them desperate. Louis’ gone hungry before, but he’s never starved; his mother, unlike most of District Twelve, had always been lucky enough with her business to keep food on the table.

“No more than you,” Zayn says drily. “Rations it is, then.”

Louis glances over at his own bag. He can just barely make it out; the light has almost entirely faded. They each started out with three. He’s eaten one and a half already, and while his stomach is growling at him to eat something, if he’s going to eat some, it would serve him better in the morning. “I’ll eat some in the morning,” he decides aloud. “And we can try eating some of these plants tomorrow.” He’s doubtful that they’re going to be lucky with the plants, as most of them don’t look particularly edible. He hasn’t seen any of the toxic plants he’d learned about in the Training Center, but that isn’t exactly a guarantee that the plants will be safe.

Suddenly the sky is alight, and the Capitol’s anthem begins playing. Louis can make out Zayn in the artificial light, can tell that he’s staring at Louis, his brow furrowed. Whatever he might have said dies in his throat as the first faces of the day’s dead tributes begin to flash across the sky. The first tribute is a girl that Louis recognizes as being the girl from Five. All the Career tributes have made it, then, which isn’t a surprise. They usually end up working together and monopolizing the supplies. The next face is the boy from Five, and then the boy from Six. Zayn lets out a breath—Perrie made it. Then both the tributes from Seven, and both the tributes from Eight. The girl from Nine. Both the tributes from Ten. Louis recognizes the boy as the one who had tried to grab his backpack. He feels like his heart is in his throat. The boy from Eleven. The sky goes black.

Eleven tributes are dead. The bloodbath was worse than normal, likely because there was nowhere for tributes to hide. He tries telling himself that his odds of surviving are that much better, but it doesn’t work. Eleven bodies.

“I can stay up and keep watch for a bit,” he tells Zayn numbly. He’s not going to be falling asleep anytime soon.

***

The next morning, they wake up with the sun, and quickly set about packing up their sleeping bags and other supplies. There has still been no sighting of any other tributes, but it’s highly likely the other tributes are trying to hide as well. Louis is stiff, sore from the previous day’s travels, and his stomach has gone from red and purple to black and purple. He manages to hide it from Zayn, not wanting to face questions about it.

They set off while the day is still young, trying to go as far as possible before the sun makes hiking about unbearable. By midday, they’ve crossed through another valley and have begun to ascend the next ridge in the seemingly unending sets of hills. In addition to becoming further and further apart, it seems that each hill is steeper than the last, with this one requiring a bit of rock climbing in a few sections. Their water is gone, and Louis only has half a bar left by the time the sun makes its way into the Western portion of the sky, hovering and bearing down heat.

Zayn has removed his shirt to wrap it around his head, shading his neck, and Louis is only a few minutes away from doing so himself when they see it. A crack at the base of the hill, on the other side, and surrounding the jagged little separation in the hillside are trees, proper trees, and a splash of vibrant green.

Zayn points, and Louis nods. That has to be water. They don’t exchange any words—Louis’ mouth is so dry the effort of speaking seems insurmountable—but they both alter their course, begin scaling the downward slope of the hill. By the time they reach the base, Louis is ready to kill for a bit of cool water, and the sun has dipped low enough that he knows they probably only have a few hours until the sun begins to set.

“Do you hear that?” Zayn asks, the words more of a rasp than actual speech.

Louis doesn’t, but when he listens harder, tries to search for whatever sound Zayn was referring to, he does: the light tinkling sound of water flowing. Zayn starts to jog, closing the distance between them and the splash of green and the sound, and Louis follows him. He ducks under a low-hanging branch of one of the broader trees, and stops short right next to Zayn, a smile splitting his face open at the sight.

It’s a tiny pond, being fed by a thin stream that seems to start further up the hill in rivulets that join into one small splashing waterfall into the pool at the base of the hill. It’s probably only a few feet deep, but Louis wants to dive in and drink until his stomach is bulging out.

Which, actually may not be safe. “Do you think it’s safe to drink?” he croaks out. God. He clears his throat, rubbing at it, and stares, longing, at the water.

“It looks clean,” Zayn says hesitantly. The water is pretty clear, and is untainted by algae. “I don’t know for sure.” They don’t have the supplies to boil it: they have nothing to hold the water while it boils and no way to start a fire.

“We should drink a little bit, and wait,” Louis suggests, even as his body tells him to shut up and just drink the damn thing. “If it makes us sick, a little bit won’t kill us, at least.”

Zayn nods his agreement. Taking only a few sips of the water is an exercise in self-control. It restores the wetness to his mouth, but doesn’t touch the dryness in his throat or the pounding in his head.

“Fennel,” he says aloud, recognizing the green, yellow-flowered plants that surround the little body of water. A smile spreads across his face. Fennel is edible. Not great-tasting, but edible. And the short, green grass sprouting up around the tree would also be edible.

Zayn wrinkles his nose. “That the one that tastes like licorice?” he asks.

Louis plucks one of the stalks off the fennel plant. It smells vaguely of licorice, light enough that it’s not overwhelming. “Yeah. But we should take as much of this as we can.” He eyes the patches around the pond, thinking about how much they can carry. It won’t be very filling, but it’s something to chew on, at the very least, and they’ll live longer eating plants than eating nothing at all.

“I hate licorice,” Zayn grumbles, but sets about picking the plants anyways. They shove as much of it as they can into their backpacks, but make sure to leave plenty untouched—if they run out, they can always come back. Fennel is not exactly high in calories or protein: even their backpacks full of the little stalks and flowers won’t last them that long. Louis eats a few, wincing at the celery-like texture, and although the licorice flavor is there, it’s muted enough that it doesn’t really make up for the fact that he’s eating it raw. At least it’s food.

After they’ve gorged themselves on the vegetation—although it’s really not possible to feel full off grass and fennel—they turn their attention back to the water. Safe to drink or not, the water is at least clean enough to bathe in, and after agreeing that they shouldn’t climb in the pool and taint the water with their sweat, they strip to their underwear and take turns filling their bottles and dumping the water on each other. Zayn murmurs in sympathy as Louis shucks off his shirt: the bruise on his stomach is distinct enough to tell exactly where the trunk of the tree had collided with his skin. Louis splashes him in the face in return, just to get rid of that sorry look.

Zayn, of course, doesn’t let that slide, and it turns into a water fight.

It’s stupid, and reckless, and loud, but Louis hasn’t felt like that in weeks. Like he was going to be okay, like he was just having fun, like he believed the affection he could see in Zayn’s eyes. He tries not to let his eyes linger on the trail of hair on Zayn’s belly, or the way his hip bones create little lines, or the way his collarbones lend a sense of delicacy to his shoulders, or the way his tongue presses against his teeth as he laughs, or the way his toes curl in the mud when Louis splashes him. Louis tries really, really hard to not notice these things.

Eventually their fight subsides, and they decide that it’s been long enough to determine that a little more water won’t kill them. They each take a few more drinks from the pool, scooping the water into their hands, and then fill their bottles to the brim. Louis is climbing one of the rocks by the water to grab another stalk of fennel when he hears it: the sharp sound of a rattle, vibrating high and fast.

They don’t really have rattlesnakes in Twelve, but there’s some long buried instinct that has him freezing dead in his tracks, heart suddenly pounding.

“Zayn,” he says and it comes out as a squeak.

Zayn looks up, reading the fear on his face, and immediately heads towards Louis. He can see the exact instant that Zayn hears the snake: the other boy freezes, understanding crossing his face. “Can you see where it is?” he whispers to Louis.

Louis shakes his head. He looks down to scan the nearby grasses, rocks, searching for whatever it is that a rattlesnake looks like. What if it just strikes—what if it just bites him, before he can see where it is? The rattle is supposed to be a warning, right? “What do I do?” His voice is high, tight, and he can hear his pulse in his ears.

“Don’t move until we know where it is,” Zayn tells him, and it’s the calmness in his voice that has Louis taking a deep, shaky breath. He sounds confident, like he knows exactly what to do, and he takes a few steps closer, he eyes on the ground around where Louis is standing. “It’s in the rocks behind you and a little to your left,” he says smoothly. “Walk directly toward me.”

Louis doesn’t dare look back as he obeys, and when he reaches Zayn, he throws both arms around him, letting out a shaky laugh into his shoulder. The rattling stops, then, and he looks over his shoulder, then, catches a little flash of motion in the rocks. A long, black, flat-headed snake slides over the rocks, disappearing into one of the crevices. He shudders at the sight of it, his arm tightening around Zayn’s waist. “Fucking hate snakes,” he comments lightly, his heart still pounding. He doesn’t care that they eat rodents, or whatever it is that they do. They’re creepy and awful.

“I think that was a mutt,” Zayn says lowly, and if there’s one thing Louis hates more than snakes, it’s fucking mutt snakes that the Gamemakers probably optimized for killing tributes as efficiently as possible. “Rattlesnakes don’t usually look like that, and it had these creepy yellow eyes.” He slips an arm over Louis’ shoulders, pressing them close.

“Let’s get out of here, Jesus.” The sun’s almost setting anyways—they need to find somewhere to stay for the night. Somewhere without mutt snakes, preferably.

“We could climb back up to the top of the hill,” Zayn suggests, looking up in the direction that they’d come earlier in the day. “Or go further into the valley.”

“I vote high ground,” Louis replies, thinking of other tributes. At least that way they’d see them coming, even if it’d be more likely that they’d be seen in return.

Zayn nods in agreement, and they each grab their backpacks, slinging them over their shoulders. “Knives out, though,” Zayn says suddenly, seriously. “Just in case.”

Just in case other tributes are nearby, potentially even on the top of the hill. Or more fucking snakes hiding in the rocks. Louis fishes his knife out of his bag, holds it tightly in his fist. He doesn’t know how to use it, but just having it there settles his nerves.

They make it to the top of the hill without seeing any other tributes, but Louis’ just as tense as ever. They settle in a flat area surrounded by short, rough brush that should be high enough to hide their presence from anyone looking up at the hill from below. They roll out their sleeping bags and manage to get down a few fistfuls of fennel without gagging, although Zayn has this wrinkled look on his face the entire time. Louis’ stomach churns, and he wonders blackly if fennel has any laxative effects. That’s the last thing they need: a bought of diarrhea to dehydrate them and slow them down.

“I hate fennel,” Zayn says through a mouthful of it. It’s just light enough out for Louis to see the disgruntled look on his face.

“Poor baby.” Louis’ stomach does another uncomfortable thing, and he thinks that he hates fennel a little bit, too. He’ll hate it a lot more after a few more meals of it.

“Hey,” Zayn says mildly. “I saved you from a snake.”

“And I saved you from starvation!” Honestly.

Zayn is smiling, soft and sweet. Louis’ heart is pounding. “Guess we’ve each saved each other.”

Louis wants to kiss him, damn all the consequences. They’re going to die, right? They deserve to a little bit of happiness before they die. It’s selfish and awful, thinking about Zayn’s lips in the middle of the fucking Games, and maybe it’ll distract him and get him killed, but he can’t help it. Luckily, the sky lights up with the Capitol’s symbol and bursts into its anthem, and anything he might have said or done dies on his tongue.

Zayn reaches out, then, and holds his hand, as they both scour the sky for the faces of the tributes that died that day. He wonders if Zayn is looking for Perrie. If he’s being entirely honest, he’s worried for her, too—he may not like her, but she’s no Career, and she doesn’t deserve to die any more than he does. The first two faces are the tributes from Three, the boy with the splotches of acne and the girl with the nose ring. Zayn’s hand tightens on his, then, and they both wait to see if a familiar face flashes then, but the sky goes dark again. Perrie’s alive, at least. So are all the Careers. They’re probably working together, may have even killed the tributes from Three.

Later, Louis offers to take the first watch. He sits in his sleeping bag, knife in his hands, squinting into the dusky black of the night, and thinks about Perrie and Zayn and Lottie and what may happen to all three of them. Trying to think his way out of the arena.

***

They rise with the sun again the next day: Zayn shakes him awake as the sun crests over the hills. He looks haggard, exhausted by two nights of sleeping only half the night, but neither of them feels safe enough to sleep without a one of them keeping watch. Maybe they can catch a nap that afternoon, if they make it to the next hill by then. In the meantime, they each eat another handful of the plants, take hearty swigs from their bottles to wash it down. They’ve agreed that they’ll stop by the pond again on their way, refill their bottles and supply of fennel and grass. They’ve also agreed that it’s safer to keep moving—water has been scarce enough thus far that this pond may be the only source for kilometers, and the last thing they want to do is stick around and have other tributes appear. If they make it to the next hill, though, they can have the advantage of a clear view, and they’ll be close enough to the pond that they can come back if they need to. Louis thinks they can get two or three days of use out of the bottles, if they’re not running like they did the first day, and he thinks they’re both hoping to find another source of water that doesn’t have mutt snakes around it.

They don’t see the snake that morning, thankfully, and after they fill up their bottles and drink as much as they can stomach from the pool, they’re on their way. The day heats up quickly, causing both of them to shed their shirts in favor of shading their heads and necks. Even without running, they’re both glistening with sweat by midday, and Louis is cursing whoever designed these uniforms and didn’t give them shorter sleeves. He smells, and he’s hot, and he’s sick of chewing on fennel.

He tells Zayn so, just because the complaints get louder the longer he lets them bounce around in his head, and Zayn looks over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. He opens his mouth to say something back, amused, but then suddenly his face shutters, fear blooming in his eyes.

“We’re being followed.”

They are the words Louis has dreaded the most, a grim reminder that there are in fact other people in this arena, people that want to kill them. Nine of them, in fact. Nine tributes left other than the pair of them.

He looks back, his heart in his throat, and he can spot them easily: two figures in the distance moving among the short brush lining the side of the hill, near the pool. They ignore the pond entirely as they pass it, and he knows, then, that they’ve seen Zayn and Louis and are following them, tracking them down. They’re moving steadily at a jog, perhaps only a few kilometers behind. It’s too far to recognize them, but Louis can think of no tributes that he would be happy or comfortable meeting.

“We have to run,” he says, and the words sound distant. There go any of their plans to make a base on the next hill, of returning to that pond. Dehydration may act fast, but running into other tributes would kill them faster.

They take off that instant, falling into a slow jog that does nothing for the itching along Louis’ neck, that feeling of being watched. He wants to sprint, to run and run until he feels safe, but he knows that exhausting himself to the extent that he can’t run anymore is the easiest way to be caught. They’re burning through their water, as well, though they try to limit themselves to small sips when their headaches become too much. His muscles are still sore from the running on the first day, and every step jounces pain into the bruises spanning his stomach, but he has to keep going.

They run, and walk, and run again for the entirety of the day, making it up and over the next hill and halfway through the following valley. There is no break for an afternoon nap, or a stop at a nonexistent water source to refill their bottles or cool down. They run, and Louis thinks he may be dying of the heat, and he can’t feel his legs. He just knows that he has to keep going and he pushes forward.

“Do we stop for the night?” Zayn asks him, panting, as they slow to a walk to ease the cramps in their sides. It’s almost sunset.

Louis looks behind him, checking, and sure enough he can see the two figures, moving steadily behind them, just now entering the valley that they are passing through. Still at most four kilometers behind. Will they stop for the night? Once night falls it’ll be impossible to see them if they continue to chase. If they stop, and the other tributes don’t, they’ll die. If they don’t stop, and the other tributes do, maybe they’ll lose them overnight. If neither of them stop, it’s only a matter of time until one of them has to stop, out of exhaustion, and Louis isn’t very optimistic about their chances of outlasting the other tributes. Tributes that track other tributes down—those are usually Careers, who have trained for nearly any possible scenario in the arena.

“They can’t run at night, right?” He sounds desperate. They can if they want to, is the thing: they will surely have flashlights, same as Zayn and Louis, and if they’re Careers, they will likely have a lot more than just that. Supplies Zayn and Louis can’t even imagine.

“Flashlights,” Zayn says, grimly, echoing Louis’ thoughts. He pauses then, a thoughtful look taking over his face. “We’ll be able to see the flashlights, though, if they use them.”

It’s risky, this assumption that they’ll be using the flashlights at all. He doubts the tributes will run in the dark and risk twisting an ankle in the rocks, but he doesn’t know for sure, and their lives ride on the outcome of this choice. “We can’t run like this all night and keep going tomorrow.” He doesn’t even know if he can keep running another hour, let alone twelve or more.

“It’ll be dark by the time we get to the top of the next hill,” Zayn adds. They stare at each other, mirror images of anxiety.

“So,” Louis concludes. “Keep going until we’ve made it to the top, and stop if we can’t see flashlights?”

“We’re going to have to climb in the dark to get up to the top,” Zayn says, chewing his lip. “If they see flashlights, they’ll know that we’ve kept moving and they won’t stop.”

God. This entire thing is one giant risk. “Let’s do it.” They don’t have much of a choice.

They keep moving, then, as the sun sets at their backs and washes the hills with color. When it finally dips behind the horizon, they’re halfway up the hill, stumbling on rocks and slowing their pace out of necessity. The Capitol symbol flashes across the sky, and the anthem plays, and still they keep going. There are no deaths that day, no tributes in the sky, and the world turns grey again.

He can barely see the ground in front of him, let alone Zayn, so when Zayn swears suddenly and goes down like a rock, he nearly falls on top of him.

“Zayn,” he gasps out, tripping and landing on his knees. “What—are you okay?”

Zayn lets out a long hiss, and he thinks he’s holding his leg. “Twisted my fucking ankle,” he grits out, and Louis just stares for a moment while _that_ sinks in.

They’re fucked, is what it means. “Can you stand on it?” he asks hurriedly. “Here, I’ll help you.” He can look at it a little closer once they’re at the top, but for now they just need to make it all the way up.

He slings one of Zayn’s arms over his shoulder, and Zayn can stand. He winces with every step, though, so Louis doesn’t get his hopes up too high about their ability to keep running tomorrow. He tries desperately not to think about what this means for them, tries to focus on getting the pair of them up the side of this hill without twisting any more ankles in the uneven surface of the rocks. Eventually they do make it, and he hurries to help Zayn sit down, lowering themselves to become invisible among the short bushes.

It’s completely dark by then, and clouds are covering the moon. If the other tributes were using flashlights, they would be visible, even from such a distance as that one. They wait in silence, not daring to speak or even begin to unpack their things, but the landscape is black and there are no lights.

“They must have stopped,” Louis says, in pure relief. At least they won’t have to confront them in the dark. And they can hopefully manage some sleep tonight.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Zayn says lowly, referring to his ankle. Louis can hear him unlacing his boot. “But it’s swollen, and it fucking hurts.”

“A sprain,” Louis supplies, and moves closer to him. He can’t see anything, doesn’t dare take out a flashlight to look more closely, but he follows Zayn’s arms to his hands to his ankle and feels it. It’s hot to the touch, clearly inflamed, and Zayn winces as he touches the side of it. Definitely some sort of sprain. “Need to wrap it and elevate it. Can’t have it swelling so much you can’t get your boot on.”

He’d rather not use his shirt to wrap the wound—it provides excellent protection against bugs and the thistles of plants he walks through. Maybe if he cut off the sleeves, and cut them into strips, he could get enough fabric that way. He blindly fishes his knife out of his backpack, flicking the blade out, and takes off his shirt, shivering at the coolness of the night air. “Take off your shirt,” he says to Zayn. “I need the sleeves to wrap it.”

Zayn obeys, and takes out his knife to mimic Louis’ cuts, removing the sleeves from the rest of the shirt and then slicing them into long strips. Louis gathers all the strips and with Zayn’s foot in his lap, sets about winding them around his foot and up his calf, binding his ankle firmly, tucking the ends of the strips into each other. He tries not to wrap it too tightly, or Zayn could lose circulation in his foot, but it needs to be tight enough that it will lend him enough support to walk and run the next day. Both of those activities will undoubtedly make the injury worse, but they need to move as much as possible.

“I think that’s the best I can do,” Louis tells him finally, sitting back from his work. He can’t see it, at all, but from running his hands along it, he thinks he’s done a passable job. “If you can’t feel your foot let me know. And put your boot back on and elevate your foot above your head.”

“Bossy,” Zayn mumbles, but his tone is light, and Louis can hear the sounds of his boot being laced back up.

They’re doomed. The thought cuts through him, stinging like he’d somehow forgotten. He almost laughs, though it’s completely inappropriate and he doesn’t know where the hysteria is coming from. Now would be a great time for a sponsor gift: maybe a mountain bike, or a horse. Liam hasn’t done anything for them thus far. He’s not going to have much of a chance to, with Zayn’s ankle and the tributes God-knows how close. He feels a sudden rush of anger, in his gut, at Liam for not helping them, at Zayn for spraining his ankle, and at himself for letting himself think for a second that they might not die. “I’ll take the first watch.” His words are short, clipped, and he takes out his sleeping bag, turning his back in Zayn’s direction. Not that he can see Louis, but it’s the sentiment of it. It’s not Zayn’s fault, but he needs some outlet for his fear and his anger.

He stays up until he can see the hazy outline of the crescent moon overhead, obscured by clouds, and when he wakes Zayn to take over for him, he pats him on the back a little. The world’s weakest apology. He lays on his sleeping bag, then, and forces himself to sleep.

***

Zayn shakes him awake what must be mere hours later.

“Get up!” His voice is low, urgent. “Get up, they’re coming!” The slight edge of panic in his voice has Louis sitting bolt upright, disoriented.

The sky is grey, light with the promise of sunrise in maybe an hour or two. “Where?” Louis croaks, and starts rolling up his sleeping bag, shoving it into his bag. He grabs his knife from where he’d left it, on a rock nearby.

“Partway up the hill!” Zayn’s voice is shrill. He’s fumbling with shoving his own sleeping bag back into his bag. “It has to be them, they must have seen me.” The sky is light enough that it’s certainly possible they may have recognized his outline as being that of a person.

“Come on.” Louis hauls him to his feet, and offers him a shoulder to lean on.

They’re not slow—panic has done enough for them that Zayn is putting weight on his foot, even if it must be paining him—but it’s not fast enough. He feels like a target, open and exposed, and his heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to come right out of his chest. The top of the hill is flat, a little plateau, and once they reach the other side he knows they’ll be much slower, picking their way carefully down the hillside. The edge is pretty close, only a few hundred meters, and as they hobble their way closer to it, Louis can feel his stomach sinking lower and lower.

They can’t run down it. It’s a sheer drop that goes straight down for probably twenty meters, and extends along nearly the entire ridge for at least a kilometer either way.

“We can climb down,” he says desperately, turning to face Zayn.

He’s pale, shaking his head slowly. “They could just drop rocks on us, and anyways, I can’t climb with this.” He jerks his foot, roughly, angrily.

Louis slips his hand into his pocket, grasping his knife with shaky fingers. “We have to fight.” He can’t fight.

Zayn shakes his head, in horror rather than denial. “I can barely even stand.”

“The Gamemakers must’ve done this on purpose,” Louis fumes, staring at the cliff. They’d done it to trap them, force them into a confrontation. All it would take would be a few rockslides to modify the hillside, turning it into a cliff.

“Louis,” Zayn gasps, then, and Louis looks up.

They’re there, three hundred meters away, a boy and a girl, and they’re running straight for Zayn and Louis.

Louis feels a bolt of panic so strong that he nearly dives off the cliff, or says _fuck it_ and tries to scale down. “Knife,” he says numbly. He holds it out in front of him, as if it were a lance. They have no where to go.

Zayn leans into him, pulls out his own knife. He’s wobbly on his own.

He can’t even stand, and Louis is the most useless fighter he knows. They’re going to die.

When the boy and girl get closer, Louis recognizes them as the tributes from Two. Careers. The girl is the one that chased them on the first day, and she’s still brandishing the knife that’s jagged and the length of her forearm. The boy has what looks to be an axe in his hands, heavy and curved. He’s good with that axe—Louis can remember the weapons instructor in the Training Center complimenting him. Louis only has his knife, and it’s barely the length of his fingers. He holds it tighter, barely breathing, as they get closer.

They slow when they’re within earshot, and come to a complete stop probably ten meters away. “Put down your weapons,” the boy says confidently. He slaps the handle of his axe with one hand. “Put down your weapons and we’ll make it quick for you.”

“Put down yours,” Louis snarls back, and his knuckles whiten around the handle of his knife. If he’s going to die, he’s not going to die like that: facedown and weaponless by choice. He steps towards them, holding the knife so that it’s pointing at them. “Put down yours.”

Zayn takes a step forward then, shoulder to shoulder with Louis, but he stumbles, wobbling as he puts weight on his ankle. A maniacal smile spreads across the girl’s face, and they both walk forward, weapons in front of them. Louis feels a keen sense of dread in his gut.

“Last chance,” the boy offers, when they’ve halved the distance. He shrugs off his backpack, dropping it smugly to the ground, as if this is just some kind of friendly spar. As if it’s a game.

“No,” Zayn says shortly, and then they’re close enough that Louis can see the color of their eyes and the dirt on their faces.

Time slows to a crawl then, as they size each other up. Louis dares not dare move first, knows that he’s at the disadvantage with having a shorter weapon. The boy tribute stares him down, and whereas he can hardly breathe for fear, the boy from Two looks almost _excited_ by the prospect of a fight.

When they move, it’s at the same time, and Louis is diving out of the way of the swing of his axe without giving it a second though. His arm scrapes roughly against a rock, his heart thudding in his ears, and if he had been faster, much faster, he might have been able to hit the boy with his knife right after the swing. He’s not faster, though, and then a second swing is coming. He rolls to the side, scrambles to his feet, and the axe comes so close to hitting him that he can feel the air move as it goes by.

A few meters away, he is distantly aware of Zayn dodging the girl’s long knife, and he thinks he’s still alive. He doesn’t have the time to check, because that axe is swinging again, and the boy tribute is laughing, clearly toying with him. He jumps backwards to avoid it, but his footing is uneven and he falls, landing roughly on his bum. He’s right on the edge of the cliff, centimeters from falling, and he scrambles back to his feet, sidestepping another swing. The boy laughs, again, manic, and the smile on his face is horrifying. He lunges forward, twisting his axe so that he hits Louis with its handle, blunt and heavy. It’s hard enough that it knocks the breath and the sense out of him, and Louis falls to his hands and knees, stunned.

He raises the axe up, high, and Louis can see its swing in his mind, landing heavily where his neck meets his head. Execution. He tries to move, make it to the side, but he knows it won’t be fast enough. His fingers twitch around the knife and his arm lashes out, burying it in the side of the boy’s knee, and then the boy is falling to his knees with a howl of pain, the axe dropping to the ground. He’s off-balance already, but Louis elbows him as he comes down, sharp and in his side, and he twists as he falls, his momentum carrying him over the side of the cliffs and out of sight.

Louis looks down, blankly registering the mangled body on the rocks below, the boom of the cannon in the sky. Then there’s a scream, high-pitched and animalistic, and he thinks _Zayn_ , his heart in his throat. He starts to turn, but then something is burying itself in the back of his thigh, setting his nerves on fire, and then he is the one screaming.

The cannon booms a second time, but he barely hears it over the shrieks ripping their way out of his throat. Whatever is in his leg is _still there_ and the pain is so great he thinks he may pass out from it. He’s collapsed onto his stomach, shaking, and when he reaches back to his thigh he can feel half the blade and the handle of the long, jagged knife sticking out of him. Touching it sends a jolt of pain up his leg, so bad that he screams again, hoarse, but all he can think is _get it out get it_ out.

“Louis, I’m sorry,” Zayn groans behind him, and he’s barely had time to register that Zayn is _alive_ before weights are settling on his back and his calves, and the knife is yanked out of his flesh.

He blacks out, then, and the next thing he’s aware of is Zayn, shaking and shoving his hands over his thigh, trying to apply pressure. The flare of pain is white hot, and he grits his teeth, biting back another scream. “It won’t stop bleeding,” Zayn cries, and his voice is high, panicked.

“Tourniquet,” Louis tries to tell him. Pressure. Elevation. But the words can’t come out, and he thinks he may black out again.

He’s being rolled over onto his back, then, and he’s distantly aware of the blood running down his leg, soaking into his pants. Zayn grabs his calf, throwing it over his shoulder to press his leg up at a right angle. It tugs at the wound and Louis tries to scream, the sound coming out as a whimper. Zayn’s shirtless, which means—he’s pressing the shirt against the hole in Louis’ thigh with one hand, wrapping his arm around the front of Louis’ leg with the other. Putting his shoulder, his entire weight into it.

He’s feeling fuzzy, but this time with blood loss rather than pain—he knows he’s gone into shock when he can barely feel the pressure against his thigh anymore.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Zayn is telling him, his voice cracking. “Not anywhere, you hear me? Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes.”

He does, if only because Zayn sounds like he’s the one bleeding out, and he longs to tell him so. Then he sees something floating above him, silver and growing in size, and he realizes it’s a tiny parachute. A sponsor’s gift. “Zayn,” he croaks.

“There’s so much blood,” Zayn says, too loud. Panicky.

“Zayn, the parachute.” His voice is weak, and he barely gets the words out between his teeth.

Zayn notices it then, leans up to catch it straight from the sky. He tears into desperately, and Louis cannot miss the look of disappointment, and then anger that contorts his face. “What am I supposed to do with matches?” he yells, in the direction of the sky, and chucks the tiny box of matches to the side.

His weight is back, pushing harder against Louis’ leg, and suddenly Louis knows what the matches are for. He breathes in, slow and deep, and tries to unlock his jaw. They don’t need them yet, but if Liam is sending them matches, they’ll need them soon. “The bleeding won’t stop,” Louis tells him, and his chest is so tight the words hurt. Everything hurts.

“What do you mean, it won’t stop?” Zayn is frantic above him, putting even more of his weight into stopping the flow of blood. “It has to stop!”

“Not on it’s own,” Louis argues. God, this is going to be awful. “You need to cauterize it. The matches are for building the fire.” He’s never felt this much dread in his life: he knows exactly what cauterization looks like. It’s awful, honestly, is inferior in nearly every way to stitches or glue, resulting in infection entirely too often, but it’s easier. It’s their only option, right now; Liam is telling them that pressure isn’t going to stop the bleeding. He’s trying to give them enough time so that Louis won’t bleed out while they keep trying to stop it. The smoke will make them incredibly visible, but the more immediate threat is the bleeding.

“God.” Zayn looks at him in horror. Louis knows exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t know how to do that, he doesn’t know if he can do it right, and he’s afraid that if Louis dies, it will be his fault.

“Fire,” Louis says, and it comes out as a command. His entire thigh is covered in blood, and the pool of it on the ground has reached his back.

Zayn jerks, his eyes wide. “Can you hold this yourself?” He takes Louis’ hands, stretching his arms so that he’s holding the shirt over the wound, keeping his leg perpendicular to the ground. Elevation won’t stop the bleeding, but it gives them time.

Zayn disappears for a few minutes, and Louis can hear him rummaging in the bushes nearby for kindling. He can hear him striking the matches off the box, swearing as it presumably fails, and shouting as it finally sparks. Then the sounds of more rummaging in the bushes, and Louis can see a thin trail of smoke rising into the air and relief spills across his belly.

“How big does it have to be?” Zayn asks nervously, his tear-stained face appearing above Louis’ face.

“Big. Hot,” Louis tells him, and Zayn disappears again.

It takes probably ten minutes for Zayn to build up a fire that Louis concedes is hot enough. Really, though, he’s just tired of laying on his back, dreading the inevitable. Zayn confirms for him that his leg is still bleeding, heavily, and the note of panic is back in his voice, assuring Louis that the wound really is bad enough to warrant this.

“Put your knife in the fire.” He moves to obey, and Louis thinks he might puke. “Take it out just before the blade turns red. If it turns red, take it out and let it cool and then try again.” He’s crying already. _Fuck_. Zayn hasn’t even touched him with the blade.

“I should clean it,” Zayn says, desperate, but Louis just waves him away. The fire will burn off most things from the knife.

From then it’s the world’s worst waiting game. Louis is steadily growing more and more anxious, as well as light-headed and weak, while Zayn frets over the best way to protect his hands when he touches the hot knife. He settles on using part of the sleeping bag as well as the flashlight to drag and scoop the knife out from among the coals. Hearing his plan only makes Louis more tense, his knuckles white around his thigh. This is suicidal. He’s going to get the world’s worst infection, if a tribute doesn’t see the smoke and come along and kill them first.

Still, he coaches Zayn through washing the stab wound as best he could with some of the water from his bottle. “Look where the blood is coming from,” he tells Zayn. “You want to press the knife to those places and hold it for a few seconds. Take it off as soon as it stops bleeding.” He cries out at the sting as Zayn pours some water into the wound, pressing his fingers lightly to the flesh to try to peer inside.

When it’s time, he presses a thick, fleshy stick between his jaws and shuts his eyes. Zayn gently rolls him onto his stomach, and he can tell Zayn’s hands are trembling. The first press of the knife has a scream wrenched out of his throat and then he’s pleading with Zayn to stop, please, stop setting him afire. He is distantly aware that Zayn is crying, too, and then all he sees is black.

***

When he wakes up the sun is shining directly overhead and he doesn’t know where he is. He sits bolt upright, and the sharp pain in his thigh makes him instantly regret that. Thigh. There’s a shirt wrapped around his thigh, a makeshift bandage. The fight on the cliffs. The boy from Two broken on rocks below. The knife in his leg. Zayn.

“Zayn,” he croaks, and then the boy in question appears in his line of vision.

He looks like hell: his eyes are ringed with red and puffy, his face a little gaunter than usual, and his usually warm brown skin has a hint of pallor to it. He’s wearing a shirt—Louis wonders whose shirt is around his leg. “You’re alive,” Zayn whispers, and he looks like he may cry, his eyes going shiny.

“Did I stop breathing or something?” Louis replies, confused. Of course he’s alive—obviously, Zayn had cauterized the stab wound, and now he’s woken up. Infection will likely be a problem, but that should take more than a few hours to kill him. Maybe something else happened while he was out—his throat is dry and scratchy, his body feels so weak that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stand, and underneath the shirt is a deep throbbing pain. It’s distracting, and Louis has to grit his teeth as the waves of pain comes, but he’s not out of his mind, at least.

“No,” Zayn chokes out, and he’s obviously holding back tears, _Jesus_. “You were out for over a day. You woke up, before, but you were delirious and, like, feverish and I thought—“ He cuts himself off, waving his hand a little wildly.

“A day?” Louis stares at him. Jesus. He doesn’t remember waking up. The last thing he can remember is sliding a stick between his teeth and bracing for the hot knife.

“God, Lou, can I—will it hurt if I hug you?” He’s wringing his hands, and Louis’ heart beats a little unsteadily in his chest.

He opens his arms in answer, and Zayn leans over to duck his head into his chest. His shoulders are shaking, and Louis pets him, a little, on his back. A day. He’d been alone for a day, and he thought Louis was going to die. How they haven’t died, haven’t been spotted and killed, is the real question, but Louis bites it back, lets Zayn burrow into his body, tiny and kitten-like. He presses his face into Zayn’s hair, and it’s kind of greasy and dirty and sweaty but it smells like him. They’re both disgusting, covered in sweat and dirt and probably dried blood, but Louis feels a little bit of the heaviness in his chest lift at having Zayn so close. He wants to hold tight and never let him go.

He killed someone. He killed the boy from Two, and he doesn’t know what that makes him.

“I thought you were going to die,” Zayn breathes into his skin, and his fingers tighten around Louis’ ribs. The pressure against his stomach is a distant pain, and he tries to tune it out. “I—you can’t die on me, Lou.”

That hits him like a punch to his already bruised gut.

He has to die, is the thing—one of them, at least, must die. But Zayn is still shaken, and Louis thinks about how scared he must have been, alone and trying to take care of Louis. They’re going to die, but Louis suddenly realizes that this knowledge hasn’t stopped him from fighting it, from caring about Zayn in a way that will only hurt them. So he lies. “I won’t, I’m okay.”

Zayn slumps into him, then, and they stay like that, in silence as the world moves around them.

“What happened, the past day?” Louis asks, finally, when Zayn pulls away and wipes at his face.

“Nothing, really,” he says, and he laughs hollowly. “Both the tributes from Two are dead.” Louis flinches, puts his face in his hands. The boy would have killed him if he hadn’t—if Louis hadn’t killed him first. He’s a killer, but he was trying to defend himself. “I couldn’t exactly move you, so we stayed here. Haven’t seen any other tributes.”

“Were you up all of last night?” Louis prods, gently, thinking about the redness in his eyes and how sluggish his motions are.

Zayn nods, and Louis feels a lump in his throat. “I kept watch, just in case.”

He’s been awake for over a day straight, just to protect Louis. God. Louis refuses to cry right now. “We need to move.” His tone is resigned—he doesn’t know how they’re going to manage that, what with his thigh and Zayn’s ankle.

Zayn nods, and a shadow falls across his face. “We’re going to run out of water,” he says. His tone tells Louis all he needs to know: they don’t have time to stay and rest there. “Our bottles are empty. The boy from Two had two of them in his backpack, and one of those is mostly full. I tried to conserve it, but that thing on your leg looked so nasty, so I cleaned it, a few times.” He jerks his hand in the direction of the shirt around Louis’ leg. “Also dug up a few extra shirts in his bag, so I tried to make them into a bandage.”

“Let me see it.” Zayn helps him to roll onto his stomach, then, and unwinds the shirt. His pants have a large hole in them right over the wound, from where Zayn probably cut them to have easier access to the area. If he arches his back and cranes his head back, he can just barely see it on the back of his thigh.

It’s just as ugly as he knew it’d be. Red and puffy, the flesh raised more than a finger’s width above the rest of the skin on his leg. It looks almost shiny, and that would be from the burns Zayn gave him to stop the bleeding. The only optimistic thing Louis has to say is that it shows no sign of any continued bleeding, and that it doesn’t look infected yet. However, moving his thigh stretches and tugs at the sides of the wound, and he grimaces at the motion. Walking should be possible, but it’s going to be painful.

“Back to the pond, then,” Louis says flatly, already resigning himself to the painful journey. It had taken them a day to get here from the pond, and they’d been running for their lives for a good portion of that. Now they’re both injured and slow, and it’ll take twice, if not three times, as long to get back.

“Eat first.” Zayn reaches into his backpack, produces a handful of wilted fennel and little strings of grass.

He hasn’t eaten in over a day, and his appetite is gone, snuffed out of existence by the pain in his leg. He forces himself to eat two handfuls of the plants anyways, and if he thought they were bland and unappealing before, he finds them downright unpalatable now. They’ve lost flavor to the heat of the day and lost their texture almost completely: they’re just limp, flavorless pieces of plant. He manages to keep the food down, though, and then he’s rising unsteadily to his knees, shuffling to the side so that he can fold up his sleeping bag. The throbbing in his leg increases and he tries to ignore it.

“Can you stand?” Zayn asks him, uncertainly, and he’s leaning against a tree, favoring his injured ankle.

“Going to have to, won’t I?” he snaps back. He uses his arms, hugging a tree and hauling himself up its trunk until he’s standing. He honestly doesn’t know how he’s going to walk, and Zayn’s in no position to be helping him.

“Louis!”

He flinches at the sound of his name, looking in the direction of Zayn’s pointed finger. A large silver parachute, with something long and slender held underneath it. What’s Liam sending them this time? Again, a horse or a hovercraft would be nice, but he’d settle for water and food and antibiotics, really. The other boy limps over to where the thing landed, and Louis squints after him, not trusting his legs to support him without the tree there.

“Some sort of crutch,” Zayn calls out, excited. “And a walking stick.” He turns around, brandishing them.

There are two—presumably one for Zayn and one for Louis. They are of the similar height and same smooth wooden material, but one has a fixture at the top that Louis thinks goes under his arm to support him. The other is plainer: a simple walking stick, made of undoubtedly fine wood. He feels a little lighter, looking at them, and when he’s slipped the crutch under his shoulder and puts his weight on it, he’s able to shuffle about without too much strain on his thigh.

“Perfect,” he tells Zayn, who is grinning at his own mobility when using the stick. Thanks, Liam.

They set off, then, and the rest of the day is dedicated to simple travel. Barely an hour into it, Louis’ thigh is itching so badly he wants to rip the skin right off, and while the crutch helps his balance and keeps weight off the leg, every tiny motion sends a pain from his thigh straight to the growing headache behind his brow. They’re slow, but steady, and by sunset they’ve made it to the bottom of the hill and a few kilometers into the valley, and at least from there, the journey will be along level ground for a good portion.

Zayn, being the more mobile of the two, helps Louis set out his sleeping bag and lowers him down onto it, careful around his leg. He settles down and resigns himself to another meal of wilted plants, unable to keep the scowl off his face as he chews through them. He’s crabby and almost too tired to feel guilty about the way he snaps at Zayn while they wait for the announcements of that day’s tribute deaths. Zayn snaps right back, even more exhausted than he is, and they’re sitting in stony silence when the sky lights up and the Capitol’s anthem plays. There are no tributes in the sky that night. That means it’s been a day and a half since the tributes from Two died, and that no one has died since. It leaves Louis feeling unsettled—the Gamemakers cannot be happy about the pacing, and unhappy Gamemakers make for horrible twists in the Games.

“I’ll keep watch,” he tells Zayn shortly. The other boy nods in response, looking so haggard that Louis is surprised he hasn’t collapsed. Almost two full days without sleep, after all.

He watches Zayn, once he’s fallen asleep. He thinks for a while about the boy from Two. It’s not any easier, thinking of himself as a killer, but he tries to shove all the hate and guilt to the back of his mind. If—and that’s a big if—he ever makes it out of this fucking arena he will deal with what he’s become then. Whatever he is—a monster, a murderer, whatever—Zayn is the same. Zayn killed the girl from Two, and Louis doesn’t know how it happened. The details don’t matter. Zayn saved his life by killing the girl from Two. He tries to balance that in his head, a life for a life, and none of it makes sense. He can’t think of Zayn as a monster, and he tries to manipulate himself into admitting that by extension, he shouldn’t think of himself as a monster, either. It doesn’t really work, but one thing becomes clear to him: he owes Zayn a life debt, and that weighs down on him. He thinks that if he has to become a killer again to pay back that debt, he would do it.

He finally manages to put the boy from Two out of his mind, but his thoughts continue to churn in his head. Now he can’t stop thinking about Zayn, alone and scared, while Louis was passed out and unresponsive and seriously injured. His life debt. He can’t stop picturing Zayn in his arms and Zayn’s mouth and Zayn’s eyes. He’s obsessed, clearly, and if he gives Zayn a few extra hours before waking him for his watch, he’ll never admit to it. It’s the least he can do for him. Being tired himself means nothing.

***

He feels terrible the next morning, sore and groggy, and the exhaustion doesn’t leave his body, even after they’ve packed up their things and started walking—or limping, rather. He doesn’t say much to Zayn, either, but as he stares at the back of his head, the words _life_ and _debt_ bounce around in his skull, giving him a headache.

“I think we can make it to the pond by the time night falls,” Zayn comments about halfway through the day, when the air is just starting to become unbearably hot.

“Good.” He’s terse, and he feels a little bad for it. He’s got only one more mouthful of water left in his bottle—he and Zayn had split the water from the other tribute’s bottle into their own—and the day is only getting hotter.

“The crutch really helps,” Zayn continues.

“Yeah.” His thigh is throbbing again. He wants to cut off his leg, sometimes (not really—he knows that’d be much worse).

They don’t speak again after that.

They don’t stop, either, for the rest of the day. Louis eats several handfuls of fennel while he hobbles along, and it takes all he has to not puke it back up. Fennel is awful, truly. He never feels full, and the taste of it deadens his appetite so much that he never feels hungry, either. He was also right about it having some mild laxative effects, but that’s another story. At least they’re almost to the pond; dehydration shouldn’t be a problem for much longer.

They’re still walking when the sun finally dips below the hills in front of them. They’re still walking half an hour later when the boom of a cannon sounds across the sky.

“Who do you think—“ Louis muses aloud, tightly. Another tribute is dead. That leaves—what? Nine? Eight?

“Hopefully a Career,” Zayn replies, darkly. Right. There are still four Careers still alive: the tributes from One and the twins from Four. Louis hopes he dies before he has to face them.

They’re still walking when the sky lights up. The anthem plays. Louis hates the anthem. A vaguely familiar face flashes across the sky. A girl, probably about fifteen.

“The girl from Eleven,” Zayn says quietly, pausing to look up at her.

Louis doesn’t know what to say, and the sense of exhaustion just gets worse. His leg feels like it’s on fire, now, and the light is fading enough that he’s having a hard time using the crutch. They’re close, though, and that keeps him moving.

He can just barely distinguish the dark outlines of the trees around the pond from the dark outline of the hill sloping up away from it. Then Zayn freezes, and he hears the distinctive sound of a footstep, a twig snapping.

“Zayn,” he gasps, and then claps a hand over his mouth, wincing at his foolishness. There’s another person. There’s another person, and it’s so dark that he can barely see Zayn in front of him, let alone a person that could be hiding anywhere around them. He doesn’t dare breathe.

“Zayn?”

He grabs Zayn’s arm at the sound, suddenly very close. High-pitched voice. Probably one of the female tributes—

“Lou, it’s okay,” Zayn tells him, as a figure appears in the dark, stepping closer.

The words don’t sink in, and he’s got his fingers wrapped around his knife seconds later, holding it out in front of him. He tugs Zayn’s arm, pulling him in closer. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears.

“Zayn, it’s me.”

“ _Lou_ , stop,” Zayn repeats, harder. “It’s just Perrie.”

He wrenches the knife out of Louis’ trembling hands, and Louis lets him. He squints into the dark, and he distantly recognizes her, from the general shape of her to the light blonde hair that looks grey in the dark. It’s Perrie, he gets _that_ , but he doesn’t understand why that’s a good thing. She may not kill them right now, but if it comes down to it, he knows she would. He wants to grab that knife back, scream at her to leave, but Zayn has a hand wrapped tight around his arm. Life debt. He needs to trust Zayn.

“Are you alone?” he asks her, roughly.

“Y-yes,” she says, and her voice breaks, a little. “I was—I was with Emma. The girl from Eleven.” She sounds like she’s crying, and Louis tries not to let that lower his guard. The girl from Eleven is dead, though, and Perrie is clearly mourning her, and Louis feels sorry for her. For them both.

“How did she die?” Zayn asks quietly. Which is an important question, Louis realizes suddenly. She died less than an hour ago, and potentially nearby. Who killed her?

“The Careers were tracking us down, so we split up. They followed her instead of me, and—“ She cuts herself off suddenly, and Louis knows for sure that she’s crying, now.

Zayn lets go of his arm, then, and pulls her into a hug. Louis just stares at them, these two figures intertwined in the dark, and feels a little bit like crying, himself. It’s been a horrible, long day, and this is a complication they don’t need. No allies. They’ve had this fight already.

“Come on,” Zayn says, to both of them. “Let’s make it to the pond.” Louis can make out the sharp look Zayn gives him and manages to bite back his complaints at having her there.

They’re close enough that it only takes a few more minutes. Perrie has already been there: she had left her supplies there when she’d heard their voices, taking only a large, curved bow and a small quiver of arrows. They set up their sleeping backs on the grass near the pond, agreeing without words that it’s not worth the effort to climb in the dark up to higher ground for the night. There are three of them, anyway: only the Careers would dare attack a group this big, and having the high ground wouldn’t stop them, anyways. All this logic doesn’t stop Louis from flinching at every sound he hears. And he remembers the snake, from before, and he knows rattlesnakes aren’t nocturnal, and that it’d make noise just before striking. None of that makes him less afraid, and he’s seeing little black snakes that don’t exist everywhere he looks.

“I’m going to kill them,” Perrie whispers, later, when they’re all sitting on their sleeping bags. “The Careers.”

“Because they killed Emma?” Zayn replies, and he sounds so tired. Tired in a way that goes deeper than sleep deprivation. Louis reaches out toward him, in the dark, and finds his hand.

“Because they killed her and they enjoyed it,” she snarls, and Louis believes her, doesn’t even question how it is that she knows. He’d seen the delight in the eyes of boy from Two as he swung his axe at Louis. “And because there’s only eight of us left, and one of us has to win.”

They’re silent after that for a few long moments. Louis hasn’t even considered that, hasn’t even thought about how there are so few left that killings become strategic, purposeful. Kill or be killed. It’s the same thing as killing the boy from Two, he thinks, and he knows instantly that’s a lie. The thought of killing a tribute so that they won’t kill him in the future feels different than killing a tribute to immediately save his own life. Life debt. He would do it for Zayn, to lessen the hold that the boy has over him. Zayn’s saved his life, and he would do anything to protect him because of it. Maybe once he saves Zayn’s life in return, he will stop feeling like this: like Zayn dying may be worse than him dying, like he would set the whole arena on fire to keep Zayn warm.

“Have you gotten anything from your sponsors?” Zayn asks her, a clear change in topic.

“Bread. Some rope. I’ve used it all up. You two obviously got the crutches from a sponsor. Anything else?”

“Matches,” Louis tells her blandly. It’s dark, and he hears more than sees her sit up.

“Matches?” She sounds excited. “Do you still have any?”

“Plenty,” Zayn tells her, confused. “Liam sent us a little box of them, and I’ve only used a few.” When he’d saved Louis’ life. Louis squeezes his hand.

“That’s how we can kill the Careers,” she blurts.

“We?” Louis mutters, mostly for Zayn, but she barrels on, ignoring him.

“Wildfire,” she announces grandly. “This place is so dry, and all these plants are half dead. They’ll burn, easy. We can start a wildfire, and it’ll get too big for them to stop it.”

Louis is gaping at her. The thing is, it’s not a bad plan.  If he were looking to kill someone, which he shouldn’t be, but there’s the matter of a life debt. If he has to kill someone, at least this way he doesn’t have to use his hands to do it. It’s a coward’s way out, but if it would keep Zayn safe—“How?” Louis asks her. He can’t see Zayn’s face, doesn’t know what he’s thinking.

“We could split up, start fires in different places. The wind would drive them together, and as long as we stay upwind from it, we should be completely safe.”

“Where would we—“

“Talk about it in the morning,” Zayn interrupts, and Louis still can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“Okay,” Perrie says, sounding a little taken aback. Louis squeezes Zayn’s hand, more than a little nervous. “I’ll take the first watch, then,” she offers.

Louis wants to say no, take it himself, but if Zayn trusts her and he trusts Zayn, he needs to let it go. The snake isn’t smart enough to ambush them. Perrie’s obviously competent enough to take care of herself, and she would wake them if the snake or any tributes were nearby. Still, his heart beats so hard he can feel it in his fingers. He lies down, on his side, so close to Zayn that he can feel his breath on his face. The other boy shuffles closer, so that their sleeping bags are touching, and then squirms closer, pressing his face into Louis’ chest. He lets out a quick breath, and wraps an arm around him, closing his eyes. The rhythmic motions of Zayn’s chest and the regular puffs of breath on Louis’ collarbone help settle the disoriented thoughts about snakes and lull him into closing his eyes. It’s the best night of sleep he gets in the arena.

***

“What do you think we should do?” Zayn asks him, the next morning, as soon as Perrie is out of earshot.

He looks at Zayn, unsure. On one hand, he doesn’t want to do anything, wants to remain as passive in these Games as possible so that when he dies it’s without any guilt. On the other hand, he wants to live as long as possible, and protect Zayn. “What’s your problem with it?” he asks, instead of answering.

“It’s risky, for one,” Zayn replies lowly. “It could kill us just as easily as it could kill anyone else.”

“It’s no riskier than waiting for the other tributes to find us,” Louis counters. He doesn’t know if he’s playing devil’s advocate or if he genuinely likes Perrie’s idea.

Zayn lets out a frustrated noise and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s going to be our fault if a tribute dies.” His voice is strained.

“We’ve killed already,” Louis whispers back, raw. They haven’t talked about the tributes from Two, about the deaths on the cliff, but maybe they should. He feels off-balance and just utterly drained, like he wants to cry but his body just won’t let him. “Someone has to win, Zayn.” It may as well be them. Or, rather, one of them. It hurts too much to think about which one it should be.

Zayn looks away. “Let’s do it.”

Louis wants to fold him into a hug, but Perrie chooses that moment to emerge from behind a few of the bushes, her hair wet.

“If you guys want to wash up, I won’t look,” she promises casually, and Louis wonders how much of their conversation she heard.

“Thanks,” Louis tells her sarcastically even as he hobbles his way towards the pond. Zayn trails after him.

“You sure?” he asks Zayn lowly, as Zayn helps him step out of his pants. He moves to stand in the ankle-deep water at the edge of the pond, where there are no rocks or grasses. No place for a snake to hide. He’s been paranoid about this.

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t offer any more than that, and Louis tries very hard to not stare at the dark hair along his thighs when he takes off his own pants. They wash each other quickly, helping each other balance on their unsteady legs, dumping water by the bottle on each other’s heads and backs and shoulders. Louis can tell from backwards glances at his thigh that the wound is redder, more inflamed, and that infection likely has set in. He tries to angle his body so that Zayn can’t get a good view of it, and he’s not sure it works. Zayn frowns, but it could be about a number of things—his wound isn’t the only change to his body. They’ve both lost weight in the days that they’ve been in here: Louis can count Zayn’s ribs if he runs his finger down his side, and the softness along his own hips and stomach and thighs is decreasing. Zayn’s collarbones are beautiful, honestly, but the way that they protrude is starting to become scary rather than sexy. He still brushes his fingers along them, and then ducks his head when Zayn gives him this sharp look, eyes very focused. He doesn’t know what that means, and he wants to pretend that he doesn’t long to press his hands against every inch of Zayn’s skin.

Being clean makes everything seem just a little bit better. When they return to Perrie, she’s packed up all their supplies, and has just finished gathering fistfuls of fennel. If it weren’t their only source of food thus far, Louis would be tempted to start the forest fire with the damn plants.

“Made a decision?” Perrie is looking at them, expectantly, her bow slung over one shoulder.

“We’ll do it,” Zayn tells her. His voice is even. Despite his initial reluctance, he’s clearly made up his mind.

“How though?” Louis cuts in, grabbing his crutch for support.

“The Careers mostly keep to the start of the arena, where we all started. That’s downwind of here—the wind’s been blowing West the entire time we’ve been here.” Perrie gestures vaguely in the direction of the hill that begins by the pond. “So we start it on the other side of the ridge, in as many places as possible, and let the wind do the work for us.”

Louis wants to ask what will happen if the fire burns back at them anyways, but he knows the answer to that and he doesn’t want to hear it aloud. “Should we wait until after the sun’s down?” Then the smoke would be harder to see.

Perrie shakes her head. “Only if you want to sit here like a target until then. Besides, it’ll take a few hours to spread out and get the fire going.”

“We should start now, then,” Louis supplies. The idea of sitting around the pond all day makes him feel exposed, a sitting duck. It’s easier to keep moving, keep his body busy so that his mind doesn’t have time to think.

Perrie agrees, and Zayn is quiet, and the three of them set off, hobbling their way up the hill. The hike is full of awkward silence—Zayn seems lost in his own world and Louis and Perrie seemingly have nothing to say to each other. An hour or so later, they’ve cleared the top of the hill and are relieved that they can’t see any tributes in the valley. Perrie comments that the Careers must be back at their pseudo-base, over the next hill, and that by the time the fire reaches them it will hopefully be too big to evade. Zayn looks away as she says it, and Louis watches the tension in his shoulders. He wants to do something, but Zayn resumes walking before he can reach out to touch him.

It’s midday by the time they reach the bottom of the hill. They divvy up the matches, giving Perrie half, and discuss the plan a little further.

“I’ll go North,” Perrie offers. “Set fires every few hundred meters until I’m out of matches.” She adjusts the bow slung across her shoulder, and Louis is briefly very grateful for the apparent respect she has for Zayn. He gets the impression that it may have saved his life.

“We can go South, then,” Louis says. He looks up at the sky, thinking. The hill they’d just climbed over was East, the valley in front of them West. They’d end up hugging the base of the hill.

“Be safe,” Zayn tells her, speaking for the first time seemingly all morning.

“You, too,” she replies, and pulls him in for a half hug. “I’ll start here.” She gives Louis a little half wave and small smile.

Louis reaches out toward Zayn, takes his hand. He’s suddenly filled with gratitude that he’s not alone, and, most of all, that Zayn, out of all the people in the world, was there with him. It’s an illogical thought—Zayn’s being there means things that Louis will probably never fully process—but nothing really make sense anymore, not even the inside of his own head.

***

By the time night falls they’ve travelled several kilometers, lighting dozens of fires and feeding them until they’re roaring. Just before sunset, they scale back up the hill to the East and set up camp at its peak. From there, they have a view of much of the valley, and the fires are burning bright in dozens of red gold patches that grow ever-larger—the arena is so dry that most of the fires took without much encouragement, and that some grew so quickly Louis feared for their own safety. True enough to the plan, they can’t smell the fire, only see it, and that makes Louis’ stomach settle, a little. The wind is blowing West, as it has for days, and with it goes the wildfire.

“Do you think it will work?” Zayn asks him, when the sky is grey and the only light comes from the moon hanging on the horizon and the fire burning kilometers away. His face is smooth, even.

“I hope so,” Louis replies quietly, and then he winces. It’s terrible to wish other tributes dead, even if they are Careers, even if they would gladly kill him in return.

“Do you see his face in your dreams? The boy from Two?” Zayn is wringing his hands in his lap, and Louis’ heart clenches.

“Yes.” It’s another reason he’s constantly sleep deprived: his dreams are jumbled and violent and end with him falling from a cliff. He always lands beside an already mangled body, holding an axe, and wakes up sweaty and afraid.

“I wanted to kill her,” Zayn tells him, and his voice shakes. “The girl from Two. She stabbed you and I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not,” Louis tells him stupidly. “You saved my life.” He’ll never be able to repay him, but Louis is trying. He looks at the distant wildfire and wonders if anything will be enough.

“What will happen after this?”

Louis looks down. “I don’t know.” It all depends on the fire, at this point. If any tributes will survive it and come to kill them. If it’ll come down to them and Perrie, the final three. “We’ll figure it out together.”

“Come here.” Zayn’s voice is soft.

Louis does an awkward little crawl over to his sleeping bag, slumping down beside him. His leg gives an awful little throb, as if to remind him that it’s infected and probably going to fester. He feels a lump in his throat as Zayn slings an arm over his shoulder.

Which of them will let the other win? He wants to ask, but he’s afraid of the answer, no matter what it is.

Then Zayn is tilting his head to look at Louis and Louis is lifting his face to look at him back. And suddenly they’re kissing, again, but this time Louis isn’t afraid.

Zayn’s lips are chapped and his breath tastes like licorice, but Louis can’t imagine anything better. He wiggles his way closer, groaning when he jostles his leg, and Zayn shudders at the sound in a way that has Louis groaning again, in a different way. He just can’t get enough of Zayn, from the scrape of week old stubble against his face to the firmness in his hands as he cups Louis’ chin, slides a hand back into Louis’ hair. His breath stutters out of him, then, as Zayn tugs lightly on his hair, and he pushes back, running a hand down Zayn’s chest to flick over one of his nipples through his shirt.

“Fuck, babe.” Zayn pulls away, and his pupils are blown and his bottom lip is between his teeth. He has this look in his eyes that’s a complex mixture of admiration and excitement and affection. Louis pinches at his nipple, and his lashes are impossibly thick as his eyes slide half-closed. Louis has never been this hard in his life, and he moves down, sucking on the skin beneath Zayn’s jaw.

Zayn bucks his hips up as Louis sucks especially hard, worrying the spot with his teeth, and as his cock presses up into Louis’ stomach, a hot brand through entirely too many layers of clothing. Louis is the one panting, then, as he shifts so he’s entirely on top of Zayn, hips to hips, mouth to throat. Zayn’s hands find their way to his hips, his bum, squeezing, and then he’s the one jerking forward to press into him. Distantly he knows that there are cameras, that this is the arena in the middle of the Games, but he’s always been a little reckless. So he thrusts into Zayn, rubbing their cocks together, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing—has never done this before—but he wants to be closer to Zayn, wants to climb into a bubble of just them and never come out.

They build up a rhythm between them, moving their hips together in little rolling motions, and they keep kissing even when kissing turns into them just panting into each other’s mouths. Louis closes his eyes, trying to shut out any knowledge of where he is and what he’s done, trying to lose himself in friction and breath being puffed over his tongue. He feels like he’s hurtling towards some invisible cliff, and not even the throb in his thigh can distract him from how good Zayn feels beneath him. The other boy grunts, then, and bends his head to suck a mark into Louis’ throat. He comes without a second thought, wet and messy, too quickly, into his pants. Zayn shudders once and joins him.

They stay on top of each other, breathless and flushed, and he presses another kiss to Zayn’s mouth, feeling so overwhelmed that his eyes prick, a little. He doesn’t know if this makes things easier or harder—he cares about Zayn entirely too much. So much that it might just ruin them both.

When the night sky lights up with the symbol of the Capitol, they’re curled around each other, crammed into one of their sleeping bags, and Louis feels warm and about as safe as he can in the arena. The face that flashes across the sky belongs to the boy from Nine, and Louis knows they’re both wondering if he died because of the fire, if they’ve killed another person. They don’t say a word about it, and Zayn offers to take the first watch, propping himself up. Louis falls asleep with his head on Zayn’s belly, his arm thrown across his thighs, and he tries desperately not to picture the boy from Nine being unable to outrun a forest fire.

***

When the sun rises the next morning, the sky doesn’t light up with orange. It’s grey and white and black, the smoke from the fire covering nearly half the sky, and the entire valley before them is charred and black. The fire has eaten away at every living them and judging by the intensity of the smoke, is raging just out of sight over the next hill. It’s scary how easy it was to cause that much destruction, and Louis has a sour taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with limp fennel stalks. There’s nothing for them to do now but wait, and when he suggests to Zayn that they return to the pond, the other boy looks relieved. It’s easier to keep moving.

They travel back North along the ridge, and it takes a few hours before they can see the green clump of trees nestled at the base of the Eastern side of the hill. From there, it’s an unsteady climb down, and they take turns helping each other balance on ever moving rocks. A cannon booms in the sky, far away, and Louis looks down, wondering if that death is their fault, too. His fault, really. They climb down far enough that they can’t see the evidence of the fire in the valley, and Louis keeps replaying the boom of the cannon in his head. Proof that he’s killed again. The cannon booms again, maybe an hour later, and he feels sick in a way that has nothing to do with the infection brewing in his thigh.

When they get to the pond, just past midday, they set about to bathing, again, and Louis tries so hard not to blush as he cleans his clothes. He slips off his underwear when he thinks Zayn isn’t looking and tries to scrub at it, erase the final traces of evidence of what they did together. He puts them back on before they’ve even dried, and if Zayn is blushing, neither of them comments on it. The water feels delightful in the heat of the early afternoon, and the trees provide shade over the pond and the rocks near it. He sets out his wet clothes on one of the rocks that gets a little sun, and then stretches out on the grass nearby, throwing an arm over his face to shade himself and relaxing with the knowledge that Zayn is watching for any threats. His leg is bothering him again, itching and burning. When he checks it, it’s more swollen than it’s even been, and so red that it’s almost purple. He presses his fingers to it, and a little bit of opaque fluid leaks down the back of his leg. He jerks his hands away, barely suppressing a gag. Definitely infected.

“How bad is it?” Zayn asks him, watching him from the other side of the pond.

“Bad.” Any infection is bad out here, where he has no antibiotics or even alcohol with which he can clean it. An infection that’s leaking pus out of a wound that deep is even worse.

Zayn doesn’t reply, and he’s frowning. It’s not his fault. Louis wants to tell him that, but it seems a little presumptuous. He closes his eyes, instead, dozes off in the warmth of the day and the coolness of the breeze across his bare skin. When he wakes up, the sun has moved across the sky, and the shade he was in has abandoned him.

“We should probably head out,” Zayn comments. “Get back to the top of the ridge by sundown.” So they could watch in case the fire burns this direction. That part goes unsaid, but Louis can hear it Zayn’s voice anyways.

“Okay,” he replies, and gets up. Zayn tosses him his pants, and he has to lean against a tree in order to pull them on, but he manages. He then sits on the edge of a rock to slip his boots back on, tucking the ends of his pants into them. When he stands, it’s shaky and he puts most of his weight onto his good leg.

Zayn has just grabbed Louis’ backpack and is holding it out to him when the rattling starts.

 _Fuck_. Louis goes absolutely still, even as his pulse goes haywire. He’d been complacent, too relaxed, and now _this._ Where is it? That fucking—he spots it, then, a black streak in the grass. It’s coiled up maybe a meter away, and its eyes are vibrant yellow, unnatural. How far away can it get him? He starts to edge away, his knuckles white on his backpack. Beside him, Zayn is just as frozen, his hand edging towards the knife he keeps in the side of his backpack.

Then a cannon booms overhead, far-off but still enormously loud, and the snake strikes so fast that Louis doesn’t even see it move. It hits the side of Louis’ boot, right at his ankle, and he jerks back, mouth opening on a scream. Its fangs have sunk in, and he’s too panicked to tell if it’s bitten him. He jumps back, dragging the snake, still attached, with him. Zayn jerks forward, then, and there’s a flash of silver as he lunges, knife drawn. His aim is true, and the blade of the knife goes clean through the snake’s body, a finger’s width from the base of its skull.

“Get it off!” Louis’ voice is shrill, and when he takes another step back, he falls straight to the ground. He kicks out at its head, still attached to his boot, hysterical, and tries to scoot backwards, away from it.

“Don’t move!” Zayn grabs at him with firm hands, trying to hold him still. The snake’s decapitated body is twitching, curling itself back up into a ball, and Louis is shaking, imagining another head just growing back. He _hates_ snakes.

Zayn manages to pin him down just enough to yank the snake’s head out of his boot, and he tosses it aside, into the grass. “Did it bite you?” he asks urgently, and starts untying Louis’ boot.

“Is it dead?” Louis demands, instead of answering. He has no idea if it bit him. He can barely feel the rocks at his back, let alone whether or not something as fine as a fang made it into his skin.

“Did it bite you?” Zayn repeats, louder, and he’s the one who sounds hysterical, now. He yanks Louis’ boot and sock off his foot, and takes Louis’ foot in his hand, turning it over to peer at it.

“I don’t know.” Zayn curses at him, poking and prodding at every inch of his foot, his ankle. “I don’t think so.” The blood roaring in his ears is settling, and he’s now beginning to flinch away from Zayn’s hands, light and ticklish on his skin.

“I don’t see a bite.” He sounds relieved. “Jesus, Lou.” He presses a hand to his face, taking in a deep breath.

“I’m okay,” Louis says, for both of them. His hands are shaking. Does that count as Zayn saving his life again? Maybe he owes him a life debt and a half. The snake didn’t bite him, but it could have.

Zayn sinks fully down, and pulls Louis in for a hug. They’re both shaking, and Louis clutches at Zayn’s shirt weakly. He feels Zayn’s breath ghosting across his neck, and then his lips are pressing against the skin at the base of his throat. They hold each other, tight, and Louis feels like crying with how very much he doesn’t want to let go. How far they’ve come, honestly: from the angry boy in the train and the boy who had punched him. Now there are life debts and the knowledge that they’ve killed for each other and urgent kisses and fear that runs deeper than almost anything else.

“Never wanna let go,” Louis whispers into the dark mess of Zayn’s hair. He didn’t mean to say it.

Zayn’s arms tighten around his ribs, and he stutters out a breath into his collarbone. They stay like that, frozen, until the sun has dipped so low that it’s reckless to put off the hike any longer. They separate, both pretending not to see the traces of tears on each other’s faces, and Louis finishes gathering up the rest of his clothes and supplies. They slowly make their way back up the hill, leaning heavily on each other and the wooden crutch and walking stick. The sun sets just as they begin to make camp and settle in, forcing down more fennel and taking conservative sips of water. The fire is clearly still burning: the sky is still grey-black with smoke, but the flames are far enough away they still cannot see them.

Three deaths. Three deaths that day. That cannot be unrelated to the fire. Three people that are dead by his hand and he doesn’t even know what they look like, who they are. Zayn is just as tense beside him, his face blank. They sit in silence, together, and wait for the sky to light up with the faces of the people they’ve killed.

The first face in the sky that night is the boy from One. A Career, but that does not make him less human. Louis forces himself to memorize his face, his freckles and his lopsided smile. The next face is the boy from Four. Plain Twin. He already knows what Plain Twin looks like, but he stares at him anyways, taking in his dark eyes and swoop of messy hair. He forces himself to think of Lipstick Twin: he’s just killed her brother. The final face in the sky is Perrie’s, and Zayn makes this wretched sound. She’s smiling in the picture they blast across the sky, and Louis wonders how she died. If she got caught up in the fire they’d started, or if a Career killed her. He thinks of the friends she talked about in her interview, her three best friends, and he feels like throwing up.

Zayn is openly crying by the time the sky goes dark, and when Louis touches his shoulder, he crumples, sagging into Louis’ chest. Then they’re both crying, and they’re crying for the tributes they’ve killed, and Perrie, and each other, and the knowledge that there are four tributes left and they’ll either die or kill again. They cry until they can’t cry anymore, until their eyes are so swollen it hurts and their stomachs ache. They both keep watch, that night, unable to properly fall asleep, and they lay in the dark, looking at the open sky and trying to hold on to each other as long as they can.

***

Louis is woken up from unsteady sleep by rain the next morning.

It starts so suddenly that he’s sure Zayn has just dumped a bottle of water over his face, and once he gets his bearings, he realizes this must be a Gamemaker’s creation. It’s pouring, utterly pouring, so hard that he can barely see three meters in front of him, and it’s been less than a minute and his hair is already soaked through. Zayn swears, and when he glances over at him, the other boy is examining the mud puddle forming directly under his sleeping bag. They really need to find shelter, if this is going to continue.

“Where should we go?” Louis asks him, having to raise his voice to be heard over the rain. He’s exhausted—he barely slept, and he spent hours crying, which would wear anyone out, let alone someone who’s as sleep-deprived as he is.

“Fuck,” Zayn replies eloquently, and starts to roll up his soggy sleeping bag. “Somewhere with trees?”

Most of the trees around are thin, gnarled things. The only trees that actually provide any sort of full cover were the ones by the pond. “Pond?” he half-yells back, and sets about rolling up his sleeping bag as well.

Zayn nods at him, and by the time they’ve fully packed up, Louis is soaked to the bone, his pants and his shirt sticking to his skin. His boots make little squelching noises in the mud as he moves, and the slickness of the mud makes walking with a crutch about a hundred times harder. They’ve barely made it twenty meters down the side of the hill when his crutch slips and he falls back, flat on his bum. Zayn helps to haul him back to his feet, and from there they move much slower. Because the sun stays invisible through the layer of angry grey clouds, it’s hard to tell exactly how much slower.

Eventually they make it to the pond, and Louis is wet and cold and dead on his feet. He helps Zayn unzip and spread one of the sleeping bags between two trees, to act as a buffer against the rain coming down nearly sideways, and then they’re huddling beneath two trees, hiding behind their makeshift shelter. The weather has not been cold the entire time they’ve been in the arena, but between being soaked and the wind, they’re shivering and wrapping themselves in the second sleeping bag.

“Think this is just to stop the fires?” Louis asks him, his teeth chattering. He rubs his own arms, trying to put some warmth back in them, and presses himself into the other boy’s side.

Zayn is shivering, too, practically vibrating. “Probably.” The tree is keeping most of the rain from reaching them, but the wind is more persistent, finding ways to twist and avoid obstacles to bite at them.

They rub at each other’s skin, trying to warm up, and then decide to shed their boots and zip themselves into the sleeping bag. They’re crammed together, still wet, and it’s almost impossible to move around inside the sleeping bag without kneeing each other, but Louis can slowly feel his shivering lessen. The rain is still coming down, as strong as ever, but the makeshift cover and the trees do wonders. His hair is damp, but no longer plastered to his forehead. Zayn’s elbow is in his ribs and his knee shoved between Louis’ legs, but it’s not bad, honestly. They lay there for quite a while, until he’s warm instead of shivering, and then the exhaustion catches up to them both.

Some time much later, Louis wakes up so hot and sweaty that he thinks he may die if he doesn’t get out of the sleeping bag. He tries to unzip it as quietly as he can and extract himself from Zayn’s various limbs—the other boy grumbles and rolls over, so he counts it as a success. The rain has slowed by then—it’s really misting more than raining now. From the lighting, he can tell it’s afternoon, and the sky has no more traces of smoke—just clouds that are seemingly dispersing to reveal patches of blue.

He’s just sitting up to stretch and check on the state of the sleeping bag hanging from the trees when hands seize him from behind and something sharp presses into his throat. He manages a scream before a hand clamps over his mouth, and he would bite it if not for the blade beginning to cut into his skin. Zayn has jerked out of the sleeping bag, his eyes wide, and when he sees Louis, he reaches blindly for his knife.

“Don’t move,” a voice says behind him. It’s Lipstick Twin, and her voice shakes.

Zayn doesn’t listen: his fingers close around the handle of the knife he took from the girl from Two, and he levels the point of the long blade at her. “Let him go.” His face is hard. Louis can see the fear in his eyes, but he keeps it from bleeding into the rest of him.

“Did you start the fire?” she snarls, and slides the blade of the knife up Louis’ neck to press it just below his chin. He’s not breathing, doesn’t dare move, but he looks at Zayn with wild eyes. He’s going to die.

“Let him go.”

“Did. You. Start. The. Fire.” The knife cuts into him, and blood trickles down his neck. His hands are trembling in the mud.

“Yes,” Louis whispers, through her hand, but she hears him.

“Look at me,” she hisses at Zayn. “Look at me and tell me you killed my brother, and then look at me while I kill him.” Her nails are biting into Louis’ cheeks, drawing blood.

Zayn’s face explodes into fear, then, and he gives Louis a raw look, panic and something more, something that has Louis’ heart twisting in his chest. His fingers slide through the mud, finding something solid. “I—“ Zayn begins to say.

“Tell me you did it!” She screams at him, her face just above Louis’ head, and the blood has reached his chest, wet and sticky on his skin. His head is spinning from holding his breath this long.

His fingers close around the solid thing in the mud, and he moves his arm in a quick motion, jerking his hand up to blindly smash the rock in his fist against the side of her head. He will never forget the awful sound that it makes when it collides with her face. She slumps forward, and then the knife leaves his throat as her body goes limp, slipping into the mud behind him.

A cannon booms, and he can’t breathe.

Properly can’t breathe: his mouth is open and he’s trying to suck air in, but he can’t fill his lungs. The rock in his fist is bloody, and he can’t see Zayn anymore, or the mud, or his own body. Just the rock with the blood on it. His heart is thudding in his chest, his stomach rolling, and he falls forward onto his hands and knees, puking. His body tries to suck in a breath even as the vomit is coming up, and he chokes, then, hacking out a cough that makes his lungs even emptier, and his vision is tunneling down to a single red stain on a rock. Hands touch his face, rub down his back, and distantly he can hear Zayn whispering to him, but nothing can pierce this fog that’s surrounding him.

His chest hurts, like he’s having a heart attack, and he clutches at it, even as he retches again, this time more bile than anything else. It burns on its way out, feels like its ripping holes in his throat from the inside. A hand is stroking through his hair, and Zayn is telling him to breathe. He’s trying to breathe, has been trying, but all he can manage are short, shallow breaths that have him seeing spots. A hand reaches down to pry the bloody rock out of his fingers, and then guides his hand to press against Zayn’s shirt, his chest. His chest rises, slowly, and Zayn tells him to breathe. Louis tries again, but his chest is stuck in a rhythm of heaving air in short little bursts. He’s panicking again, this time from an instinctual fear of suffocating. Zayn tells him _just breathe_ , and makes him feel how Zayn’s chest rises and falls, steady and slow.

He tries to focus on Zayn’s breathing and matching his own to it. Zayn’s whispering softly to him, telling him _it’s okay, breathe_ , and he finally manages a gulp of air that isn’t a gasp. He feels some of his panic evaporate, then, at the sign that maybe he’s not going to suffocate and die. He inhales again, as slowly as he can. It takes dozens of breaths before he can breathe in as slowly as Zayn, hold the air in his chest, and then let it out, their chests falling together. His stomach begins to settle, and he can see his hands now, smudged with dirt and something less viscous, something red and so terrible he nearly throws up again.

“We have to move, babe,” Zayn whispers, and while his voice is gentle, it’s urgent. The boom of the cannon. They need to collect the body. He nods, lets Zayn help him to his feet, hand him his crutch to lean on. He tries to focus on his breathing, and he wipes his hands on the back of his pants, where he can’t see the stains they leave. The blinding panic has faded, leaving him feeling so drained he wants to lie facedown in the mud.

Zayn leads him only a little ways away, and rubs his back while the hovercraft appears in the sky, loud and awful. His shoulders are shaking, not from panic or cold this time, and he thinks the cut on his throat has finally stopped bleeding. He can see a limp figure being lifted up into the hovercraft, and all he can imagine is the blood on his hands. He wipes them again on his pants, and it’ll never be enough—he will never be able to clean them well enough to get rid of the stain. The hovercraft has picked up the body of the girl from Four, and flies up, through the clouds and out of sight.

They return to the pond, agreeing silently that they may as well stay there for the night. There’s no evidence of Lipstick Twin. The ground is smooth, no blood, and there are only a handful of things that prove they’ve been there at all: the sleeping bags, one in the grass and one in the tree, and the fennel plants which have been eaten to such an extent there’s barely any left, and the black coiled body of a snake that’s been dead for a day and left on the rocks by the pool. He can’t see the rock Zayn pried out of his hands, and it’s worse, somehow, that even the rock seems to be gone.

“I killed her.” A mixture of wonder and horror clogs his throat, straining his voice. He thinks of the blood of his hands, Lipstick Twin’s blood, and he doesn’t even know her real name.

“You did what you had to.” Zayn is quiet.

He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to at all. Now there are three tributes left, just him and Zayn and the girl from One, and he should have let her kill him. “I didn’t have to.” He has blood on his hands, and it’s worse than causing a tribute to fall off a cliff or burn in a fire. And now he has to wait for the tribute from One to find them. So the three of them can figure out who exactly will be winning this. He wishes he were dead. He says it aloud, and the words don’t quite sound right—he’s glad to be alive, but he won’t be glad to be alive if he wins, if Zayn dies.

“Don’t say that.” There’s that thing in Zayn’s voice, the same thing that Louis saw in his eyes when the knife pressed to his throat, and he’s both scared of it and desperate to find out what it is.

“I don’t want to win,” he tells him, impulsively, and his voice catches around a little sob. His hands are shaking. “I can’t do this.”

“I know.” Zayn’s eyes are watering, just a little, and he reaches out to take Louis’ hand. “I don’t want to, either.” They look at each other, in wonder, in fear, and Louis feels overwhelmed by it all, by the words they’ve exchanged that may as well be vows, by the way Zayn’s words have made his chest feel tight.

Any night could be their last night, any day could be their last day, but this moment suddenly feels like their last moment. They move towards each other like moths to a flame, mouths and hands meeting in the middle. They kiss each other like they mean it, like it means everything they cannot bring themselves to say. Louis finds himself pressed down, into a damp sleeping bag, with Zayn between his legs and on top of him. He’s got a fistful of Zayn’s hair and a hand on his bum, and he’s kissing him like he’ll never get another chance at it.

“I love you.” It sinks into Louis’ skin where Zayn’s mouth rests just below his collarbone, like a tattoo, the words permanently a part of him.

Louis kisses him, harder, and moves to lift his shirt over his head. The Capitol has cameras, but they can fucking turn them off. They both end up half-naked, and Zayn sucks kisses down Louis’ torso until he’s sucking right over Louis’ cock. It’s an instantaneous decision to strip completely, but Louis has decided not to hold back, and when Zayn laps at the head of his cock, hesitant, he feels no regret.

Zayn’s mouth is wet and warm and inexperienced, his teeth occasionally catching or his throat convulsing as he accidentally takes Louis too deep, but he looks beautiful, with his lashes low against his cheekbones and his lips taut around Louis’ cock. He’s perfect, and he said he loved Louis, and when Louis is close to coming, he thinks that he loves Zayn, too.

After he’s pinned Zayn down to suck him off in return, after they both have come all too soon, overwhelmed, after all of that, he says the words back. He whispers them into the skin below Zayn’s ear, as they curl around each other, sleepy and warm, and he wonders if Zayn feels the words like a brand on his skin.

***

Louis wakes up to Zayn’s hand running down his arm, to his leg thrown over Zayn’s hip, to his hand balled up in a fist against Zayn’s back. He forgets where he is, for just a brief moment, and in that moment he feels perfectly content. Then he registers the dull pain in his thigh, and the tenderness along his throat, and the tension in Zayn’s body. The arena. Right. He sits up, then, runs a hand through his hair. Three tributes.

“Should we stay here?” His voice is a croak, and Zayn passes him a bottle of water.

What he means is should they look for the tribute from One, or should they let her find them first. Should they go looking for death or let it track them down.

“Stay.” Zayn’s voice is low, scratchy. Louis brushes his fingers across his own chest, across the _I love you_.

Louis agrees. The girl from One will have to find them, and if it’s taking too long, he’s sure the Gamemakers will speed things along. He’s not sure what will happen—she’s a Career, granted, but she’s also outnumbered. Will she be able to overpower one of them? Louis doesn’t know—he doesn’t know what will happen if she fails to kill them, and they end up as the last two tributes. He should have let Lipstick Twin kill him, he really should have—then Zayn would have killed her, and Zayn would stand a chance of winning. At least then they wouldn’t have to choose who will get to live, choose which of them will die for the other. Even if the girl from One finds them, they’ll have to choose, indirectly: if she presses a knife to Zayn’s throat, would Louis let her kill him? Would Zayn let her kill Louis, if the situation were reversed? Would he kill her before she gets the chance to kill either of them, and walk away with more blood on his hands?

Despite the thoughts clamoring around in his mind, he feels an eerie sense of calm, like he’s panicked so much over the past week and a half that he can’t bring himself to find any more panic inside him. He looks at Zayn, who’s bent over and rolling up the second sleeping bag, and he wonders if Zayn’s going to be the one to walk out of this arena, and the thought fills him with immeasurable sadness. He thinks back to last night, of Zayn and him, together, and realizes suddenly that it wasn’t enough. The time they’ve had together is not enough, and if Louis is the one to walk out of this arena, he will never be the same.

They end up washing again, scrubbing off mud and blood, the water at their feet dark in color. They strip entirely this time, tacitly acknowledging that they’ve no reason to hide. It’s not sexual, but it is something, Louis thinks, as he watches the dirty water find paths down Zayn’s ribs. Intimate, maybe: the two of them pressing hands to each other’s bodies, rubbing the places they can’t reach themselves. Zayn winces at the sight of the wound on Louis’ thigh, and then he’s laying flat on his stomach so Zayn can flush the site with water. It hurts, and he’s clenching his jaw as the other boy presses gentle fingers to the area, and he wonders how much longer he’ll live with the infection there. He’s seen the redness on his thigh, has felt colder than he should and hotter than he should, feverish, and he knows he’ll end up with blood poisoning in probably another day. Out here, blood poisoning is a guaranteed death, albeit a slow, delirious one. Even if the girl from One avoids them for another week, and the Gamemakers leave them alone, he will die.

Louis is busy washing the sweat out of his socks when the cannon booms, loud and heavy.

For a very long moment, his mind is just completely blank.

“No,” Zayn says, and it’s loud, too loud. “No.” He hears the thud as Zayn drops whatever he was holding.

Louis feels numb. Time to choose. “Zayn, I—“

“No,” Zayn snarls at him. His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide, and when his hands close around Louis’ shoulders, they’re hard and jerky, almost shaking him. He looks how Louis should feel: confused and angry and afraid.

He loves Zayn so, so much. “I can—“ He doesn’t get to finish.

Zayn kisses him, roughly, and pulls away just as quickly. “No. You’re not fucking doing anything.” His voice catches.

He thinks of Lottie, of his family, and feels his heart stutter. He’s already said his goodbyes, on a train weeks ago. Zayn has a family, too, a mother and sisters and a father, a bakery, a cat that comes by every morning for milk. “One of us has to.” Has to concede defeat, has to step down, has to die. He can’t feel his face. He wishes he had let Lipstick Twin kill him before he ever saw _this_ expression on Zayn’s face.

“No, we don’t,” Zayn snaps, and his fingers are digging into Louis’ skin. “We won’t do anything.”

“Zayn.” He kisses him again, and it’s softer, and wetter. One of them is crying, or maybe they both are.

“No,” Zayn whispers against his mouth.

Above them, a silver parachute twirls its way to the ground. Louis knows what it is before he even picks it up. A small, round gold coin.

“Is this a fucking joke?” Zayn directs this at the sky, at the Gamemakers, at the sponsors, at Liam.

“We always said we would,” Louis tells him, a sad smile twisting his face. He runs his fingers across the coin. He feels like he’s watching a scene play out in front of him, like he’s a spectator in his own life. He turns the coin over in his palm, and frowns, squinting at it. “Zayn.” He hands the other boy the coin.

“I’m not about to—“ Zayn begins, and moves to throw the coin into the pond.

Louis catches his arm before he can. “Look at it.” His heart is beating a little faster in his chest. He’s starting to get an idea of what this might mean.

Zayn obeys, turns the coin over, looks at both sides. Heads and heads. No tails. “What?” he says flatly, and gives Louis a look.

“I love you,” Louis tells him, and he feels like the words echo around them.

“I won’t let you,” Zayn snarls at him, and he throws the coin into the mud.

“Two heads,” Louis tells him. The same either way they flip it. There’s only one outcome here.

“I’m not going to let you fucking off yourself so I can win.” He’s back to angry. “I’ll kill myself—they won’t have a winner.”

 _They won’t have a winner._ Two heads. Maybe Louis was wrong—maybe Liam isn’t trying to tell them that Louis should be the one to die. “We could do it together.”

Zayn looks at him. Really looks at him, his eyes wet and his cheeks gaunt. “I won’t let you die.”

Louis is not going to walk out of this arena alone. He won’t do it. He won’t let Zayn save his life a third time, won’t let himself live with the knowledge that he let the boy he loves die for him. “I’m not leaving this arena.” His voice is firm.

Zayn lets go of his shoulders to press his face into his hands. “Together?” His voice breaks over the word.

Louis feels like his heart is breaking. “Together.” Deny the Capitol a winner, refuse to allow them to force Zayn and Louis to choose. How’s that for boyish attitude, teenage rebellion, eh, Liam?

“How?”

That’s the question. Poison, bleeding to death, drowning, jumping from a high place. Not many people get to choose how they die. Then Louis remembers the coiled body of a black rattlesnake, and thinks maybe that’s it. “Snake,” he suggests. Snake heads are still venomous after they’re dead. It wouldn’t be an instantaneous death, but he bets it would be a quick one—the Capitol usually makes its mutts very efficient killers.

Zayn sucks in a shaky breath, nods, and he takes Louis’ hand. The snake’s body and dismembered head are where they left it, on a rock by the pond. The body is covered with ants, with flies, but the head has been left alone. If that isn’t proof of the snake’s venom, Louis doesn’t know what is. Zayn is the one to pick up the snake’s head, is the one to open the snake’s jaw. Its fangs are about the length of half of Louis’ smallest finger, its head bigger than Louis’ fist.

“Into the bloodstream,” Louis whispers. He’s suddenly very afraid.

“Wrist,” Zayn says back.

They each hold up their arms, pressing them together so the undersides of their wrists are face-up. Zayn angles the head so a fang brushes against each of their skin. He stills, holding it there, and they look at each other.

“I love you,” Louis tells him.

“I love you, too,” Zayn whispers, and he tenses his arm.

“Wait!” The word booms out of the sky, but Zayn has already struck the snake’s head, plunging the fangs so they pierce through skin, releasing the snake’s venom.

Louis doesn’t feel anything for a few tense seconds, and he tries to flex his fingers. His hand won’t move. He stumbles back, the fang leaving his skin, starting to panic. He can’t move his hand. He tries to suck in a breath and finds that his throat feels tight. He looks at Zayn, desperate, and the other boy has fallen to his knees, his hands wrapped around his throat and his mouth hanging open. He’s terrified, they both are, even if this is what they wanted.

The voice from sky is speaking, but Louis can only pick out a few words:  sixty-fifth Hunger Games. There’s a roaring in his ears.

The last thing he sees is the panic in Zayn’s face, and then his vision goes black.

***

Louis wakes up to white light and a masked face leaning over him, and he screams and screams until everything fades to black again.

***

The next time he wakes up he notices the IV in his arm and how everything in sight is white. Why isn’t he dead? Where is Zayn? He’s too weak to climb out of the bed, and he lays there, staring at the blank ceiling, and wonders if he’s happy or afraid that he’s alive.

***

None of the doctors really talk to him. They ignore him, mostly, and won’t tell him what day it is or where Zayn is. He feels like he’s losing his mind.

***

Finally Liam is there, and he’s never been so relieved in his entire life.

“What the fuck happened?”

Liam looks exhausted, and he moves to sit on the side of Louis’ bed. “You won. Both of you did.”

Both of them? “Zayn’s alive?” Hope squishes the air out of his chest.

“He’s fine. Better off than you.” Liam presses fingers to his temples. Louis is afraid, now, because having both his tributes be alive shouldn’t make Liam look like he’s falling apart.

“I need to see him.” He needs to know Zayn is okay.

“They’re trying to keep you two separate for the time being. There’s never been two winners before.” No shit, Louis wants to say, but the look on Liam’s face shuts him up. “Louis, they’re not happy about it. Some of the Gamemakers interpreted this as deliberate rebellion.”

“It wasn’t.” It really wasn’t. They weren’t thinking about the Capitol at all.

“I know that,” Liam says, and Louis wonders suddenly if he’s in trouble for the coin. “But the Capitol doesn’t know that, the districts don’t know that, and you need to convince them of it.” Or else. There’s a threat in his voice, one that was probably given to him to pass along to Louis.

“I need to see him,” Louis repeats, stubborn. He’s not agreeing to anything until he sees Zayn.

“I can probably get him in later today,” Liam concedes. “It’ll have to be quick.”

“Okay.” Okay. He can wait.

***

When Zayn appears in the door, Louis feels relief wash over him, his breath rushing out in a sigh. He is alive, and he looks better than he did the last time Louis saw him. He’s got color in his face again, and his cheeks look fuller, less gaunt. He’s walking, too, without a limp, and Louis can see he’s wearing a booted cast over his ankle. He’s not smiling, but there’s something light in his face. When he climbs into Louis’ bed to hug him tightly to his chest, Louis can feel the strength returned to his arms the steadiness of his heartbeat.

“You’re alive.” There’s wonder in Zayn’s voice, and Louis wonders if the doctors wouldn’t tell him that, either.

“I don’t know how I am,” Louis whispers. “But I am.”

Zayn chokes out a little laugh into the top of Louis’ head. “How the hell are we alive?” He sounds like he’s in shock, and Louis understands. He doesn’t know if he will ever wake up and not be shocked that he’s alive.

“I’m glad,” Louis kisses the words into Zayn’s throat. It’s a simplistic summary of everything that he feels.

“Liam talked to you.” It’s not a question. “We’re having an interview in a few days. They’re never going to leave us alone.” They’re never going to let Louis and Zayn forget, will never let them escape what they’ve done. The tributes from Two. The fire. Perrie. The twins from Four.

The thought of it makes Louis feel sick. “Together.” They’ll be together, at least. Firewood and band aids.

“Always,” Zayn promises him, and they fall silent.

Louis doesn’t know what the next few days and weeks and months and even years will bring. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be really happy again, or if he’ll forget the faces of the people he’s killed. He doesn’t know if Lottie will shy away from him, or if his family will pity him. He doesn’t know if they’ll be able to convince the Capitol and the Gamemakers that they weren’t hoping to instigate a rebellion or if he even wants to try. What he does know is simple: he loves Zayn, and they’ll be together every step of the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...thanks for reading! 
> 
> Also: don't cauterize anything on your body, ever. And don't take anything in this fic as good survival advice. I did my research, but I'm no expert.


End file.
